A year-end review is the final pass over a client’s books before the financial year closes. It confirms that every period has been reconciled, that adjustments are posted, and that the resulting reports are accurate enough to hand to an accountant, auditor, or tax preparer. Done well, it turns twelve months of bookkeeping into a clean, defensible set of accounts. Done poorly, it leaves surprises that surface later: an unreconciled bank account, a depreciation entry nobody booked, or a balance that no one can explain when the financial reporting deadline is already close.
The difference usually comes down to process. When the year-end lives in one person’s head, steps get skipped under deadline pressure and each job is finished slightly differently. A repeatable workflow fixes that. It makes sure the general ledger is reviewed the same way every time, that supporting documents are collected before review rather than chased afterward, and that anomalies are caught while there is still room to correct them.
When to run it
Run this job once per client at the financial year-end, after all monthly bookkeeping has been completed and finalised. Assign a clear owner: usually the bookkeeper or accountant responsible for the client. The owner is accountable for working through the steps, sending requests, and confirming the books are ready for review or filing.
How to run it in Tidyflow
Set this up as a reusable job template so the year-end runs the same way for every client. Each step in the checklist becomes a subtask your team checks off, and you can apply the template to a single client or across your book of business. Because the work repeats every year, you can schedule it as a recurring job so it appears automatically at each year-end without anyone having to remember to create it.
The client requests attached to the template become items your client completes in their client portal: missing statements, clarification on unclear transactions, and final approval of the reports. Everything they upload lands in document management alongside the job, so the workpapers, statements, and schedules stay in one place. Progress and ownership stay visible through workflow management, so you can see at a glance which year-ends are on track and which are waiting on the client.
Common pitfalls
- Closing the year before every month is reconciled and marked final, so errors carry into the year-end balances.
- Leaving fixed assets and depreciation until last, then discovering additions or disposals that change the reports.
- Chasing statements and clarifications by email instead of through portal requests, which makes it hard to track what is still outstanding.
- Posting adjusting journal entries without recording why, leaving no audit trail for the accountant or auditor.
- Generating reports before owner, drawings, and loan accounts are reconciled, so the balance sheet does not tie out.