Datasheet

Book VII
Chapter 1
Administering
QuickBooks
Maintaining Good Accounting Controls
495
that you take responsibility for ensuring that employees are trained to
do the things that protect your accounting system (such as backing up
the data file) and that you ensure that they complete appropriate
accounting procedures on a monthly and annual basis (such as sending
out all invoices, reconciling bank accounts, cleaning up messy transac-
tions, and so forth). I don’t think this management responsibility needs
to be a heavy one. You can rather easily make sure that people are doing
the sorts of things they are supposed to be doing by creating some
simple checklists. Table 1-1 shows a sample monthly accounting to-do
list. Table 1-2 shows a sample annual accounting to-do list. You can use
these as starting points for constructing your own list of things that the
accounting clerk or office manager must do every month or at the end of
every year.
Table 1-1 A Sample Monthly Accounting To-Do List
Data backed up and moved offsite
Bank accounts reconciled
All invoices, credit memos, statements out
Any suspense accounts cleaned up
Financial statements delivered
Exceptions reported (for example, overdue invoices, bills, purchase orders, under-stocked
inventory items)
Table 1-2 A Sample Annual Accounting To-Do List
Adjust trial balance
Burn CD with year-end numbers for permanent record
Consider archiving data files if they’re huge
Close year when really done
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