When the new financial year is underway, you should start thinking about getting the financial information for the previous year ready for your accountant to use for preparing your financial returns.
Watch this video and/or read this resource to learn about the end-of-financial-year checklist.
Your accountant will supply you with an end-of-year questionnaire to complete and some of the questions can be easily answered if the information in your Farm Focus farm business is correct.
Things you can check
Is the Needs Action page up to date?
Check that invoices from the completed year are not still sitting in Needs Action. They should be matched to the corresponding bank transaction and sitting on the Completed page. Also, make sure there are no transactions from the completed year waiting to be matched or coded.
Is your bank account balanced?
Go to the Balancing page and check that your bank account(s) has the correct balance on the last day of your financial year. You can also attach a copy of your closing bank statement to the last transaction of the year displayed on the Balancing page.
Do I need to correct any coding?
Go to the Completed page and check for any coding mistakes. While you’re here, you can also add missing information such as kg of wool or tonnes of fertiliser.
Are my closing livestock tallies correct?
Livestock tallies do matter so be careful that the stock transactions (sales and purchases) have been coded correctly and that tallies for births, deaths and missing have been recorded. Use the Livestock Reconciliation report to make sure your Year End tallies are correct.
What else do I need to do?
Invite your accountant
If you haven't already done so, invite your accountant to log into your Farm Focus farm business. They can then access reports such as the Accountants Annual report to determine what information they need from you.
Attach documents
Your accountant will require paperwork for bills, dividends, rebate statements and more to process your financial accounts. Attach these documents to the relevant transaction or invoice in Farm Focus so that your accountant can access them without sending you a long list.
Allocate transactions to the correct financial year
If necessary, you can add an invoice date to a completed transaction (that has not been matched to an invoice) to allocate it to the correct financial year.
Alternatively, if your transaction has an invoice matched but the invoice date is incorrect:
From the completed screen, click into the transaction and select Go to matched Invoice
From within the invoice, you can edit the invoice date
Why do I need to change the invoice date?
The invoice date will dictate which financial year a transaction is allocated to. For any invoices that are to be paid in the next financial year, it is important to represent them in the correct year.
More information