End of financial year checklist

It’s that time of year when you’re either scrambling to file your last financial year before the end of March or gearing up to complete another financial year.

When preparing for the year-end, you may want to start collecting the documents or information you’ll need to provide to your accountant (including but not limited to):

• Copy of your bank accounts and credit cards showing the balance at 31 March (either screenshots or actual statements) – if we don’t have automatic bank feeds in Xero, you may also need to provide a .csv file with the transactions from 1 April to 31 March.
  
• A list of your debtors and creditors owing at 31 March (if you are using a business edition of Xero then make sure that these are up to date).
  
• Copies of any legal invoices paid during the year.
  
• Copies of any portfolio tax statements and details.
  
• Copies of any settlement statements for purchases and or sales of property.
  
• Details of any expenses paid from personal accounts that aren’t included in your business accounts.
  
• Details of anything you aren’t sure about or how to treat.
  
• Details of any term deposits you may have taken out during the year, including the amount, interest rate, and term of the deposit.
  
• Details of any new loans or hire purchases you may have taken out during the year, either from the bank, instant finance, or any other institution.
  
• Copy of loan statements showing the balance at 31 March as well as the current interest rates. Some banks provide summaries every year showing the balance, what principal and interest has been paid and the interest owing at 31 March.
  
• Copy of any repairs and maintenance invoices over $1,000.
  
• Copy of GST workings if not done in Xero.

Things that you will need to look at as the financial year-end approaches:

• If you have trading stock, you will need to do a stock-take on or around 31 March – please look to see if any stock is obsolete and provide details.
  
• If you have any debtors that are outstanding and are not likely to pay, then you need to look at whether they should be bad debts and write these off in your debtors ledger prior to 31 March – if you haven’t done this previously, please contact your accountant, and they can advise you what to do.
  
• If you pay wages, you’ll need to provide a breakdown of any holiday accruals, leave accruals or bonuses at 31 March. This information needs to be split between what was paid within 63 days of the balance date (2 June if it’s a March balance date) and what was not paid within 63 days—this determines what is deductible.
  
• If you are paying interest to anyone other than a bank that is over $5,000, are you deducting resident withholding tax (RWT) from the payment? If not, you may need to ask your accountant what you need to do.

If you are an individual who earns a salary with PAYE deducted and maybe a little bit of interest and or dividends, your accountant may ask you to confirm whether or not you have any other income that hasn’t been recorded at IRD – they should be able to send you a copy of your summary of earnings (SOE) printed directly from IRD for you to confirm.

Once you have provided the information above, your accountant should be able to prepare your accounts and tax returns and advise what tax, if any, that you need to pay.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.