End-of-year business checklist for wrapping up 2024

Reviewing financial statements, reconciling payroll transactions with the business’s general ledger account, working out a roadmap for the new year… There is a vast variety of tasks business owners and CEOs have on their to-do list as the year comes to a close.

Given that there is only little time to get everything done before the start of the new year, year-end is a challenging time for businesses. Plus, with so many different tasks to complete, it’s easy to forget something important.

What should businesses do at the end of the year? What needs to happen in terms of workforce and business planning, tax filing, and payroll reconciliation? What are the accounting tasks at year-end that must be done to close the books? 

We have compiled a detailed business year-end checklist that will help you successfully wrap up your business year.

The end of the year is a good time to think about your business’s future staffing needs and start working on a talent acquisition strategy that will help you ensure those needs are met. Workforce-related items to put on your end-of-year business checklist include:

• Analyzing payroll data to identify which departments are currently overstaffed or understaffed,

• Identifying which new positions will need to be filled,

• Deciding on offering year-end incentives to improve employee retention, and

• Conducting compensation reviews and updating your employee compensation strategy to increase your business’s attractiveness as an employer.

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Closing your books is arguably one of the most important activities that you need to do at the end of the fiscal year. Only if all your financial transactions are wrapped up, reviewed, and recorded, can you make a fresh start into the new business year.

If your fiscal year aligns with the calendar year, your year-end checklist should also include the following tasks:

• Ensuring all projects and orders are invoiced,

• Issuing any outstanding payments to contractors, employees, and service providers,

• Recording your business expenses,

• Compiling all the necessary documents, such as bank statements, inventory counts, and credit card bills,

• Reconciling accounts receivable and accounts payable,

• Checking that bank statements match with business expenses and earned income, 

• Going through all your accounts and reports to make sure your data is clean, and

• Preparing your financial statements, including your profit and loss statement, income statement, cash flow statement, and balance sheet.

Assessing your business’s financial situation helps you better plan for the upcoming year. Knowing how much profit you made and how high your expenses were for the closing year is the basis for making informed decisions for the next one. Tasks to complete in this context include:

• Taking a close look at your financial and cash flow statements to identify potential patterns in cash flow shortages,

• Analyzing the annual total of your expenses,

• Calculating your profit margins and total debt,

• Comparing last year’s budget to the actual spendings you had in the current year, and

• Drawing up a budget for the new year.

As the tax year comes to an end, the wheels turn particularly fast in the payroll department. There are payroll reports to prepare, payroll policies to review, loads of data to verify, and much, much more. Here are a few items that shouldn’t be missing on your year-end checklist for payroll:

• Checking your payroll taxes,

• Setting and scheduling year-end bonuses,

• Preparing a list of all the requirements, necessary documents, and deadlines for tax filing,

• Gathering payroll tax forms and/or setting things up for electronic filing,

• Auditing payroll data and processes,

• Checking employee and employer information for accuracy and completeness,

• Recording special tax items, such as fringe benefits, transportation allowances, stock options, and bonuses,

• Getting your year-end payroll reconciliation done, and

• Preparing year-end payroll reporting.

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Payroll taxes aren’t the only kind of tax businesses need to deal with. In addition to the taxes they withhold from employee wages and salaries, they also need to declare corporate income tax (CIT), file VAT returns, and more. Unless your fiscal year differs from the calendar year, you should complete the following tasks as the year comes to a close:

• Checking relevant tax policies that apply to your business,

• Examining corporate tax rate and tax brackets to estimate your corporate tax liability, 

• Finding out what deductions and tax credits you can claim,

• Taking some last-minute measures to reduce your business’s taxable income and save taxes, such as deferring income or accelerating deductions,

• Making asset depreciation entries,

• Printing financial and income tax reports, and

• Gathering the necessary tax forms or setting things up for filing taxes electronically.

Having a firm strategy and clearly defined, achievable goals is a key factor for business success. In order to get the new year off to a good start, your year-end checklist should also include:

• Assessing the achievement of business goals from the previous year,

• Reviewing your business strategy and adjusting it to your current financial situation and the current business climate,

• Creating specific goals for the new year that align with your general business strategy for the next few years, and

• Working out a concrete roadmap to achieve your goals.

An important part of successfully wrapping up your business year is to identify shortcomings, challenges, and struggles you are currently facing and think about how to overcome them in the new year. Here are some ideas for some great New Year’s resolutions for payroll, HR, and more:

• Reducing the number of payroll errors per 1,000 paychecks and improve overall payroll accuracy,

• Becoming a remote-first company,

• Improving employee engagement,

• Offering more possibilities for Learning and Development, 

• Reviewing your hiring processes to increase diversity,

• Adding new, exciting employee benefits,

• Starting employee recognition initiatives,

• Going paperless in payroll and HR,

• Keeping on top of your finances and accounting throughout the year, and

• Improving your remote leadership skills.

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Similarly to properly closing the books in accounting, you should also make sure you end the year with a clean slate when it comes to IT and data safety. When going through your business year-end checklist, make sure to also think about:

• Downloading important files and documents,

• Backing up data, files and records, 

• Reviewing your payroll security standards, and

• Verifying that your business complies with data security requirements.

Accounting, payroll, strategy, and finance are the key areas that typically make up the majority of items on an end-of-year business checklist. But there are many more things businesses should do as the year comes to a close, such as:

• Reviewing your business and marketing plans,

• Taking a physical inventory,

• Reviewing your business structure,

• Checking your business’s insurance coverage,

• Checking for scheduled legal changes that will affect your business,

• Adjusting your pricing structure,

• Reminding your employees to update their personal information (if necessary) and provide all the information, data, and forms you need, and

• Reviewing vendor contracts and evaluate the level of service you receive to find out if you need to replace any of your service vendors (e. g. your payroll provider).

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This blog post gives you a broad overview of the different tasks businesses need to complete as the year comes to an end. However, there are many more tasks that should make it onto your end-of-year business checklist. Download our ultimate year-end checklist for businesses and make sure you got everything wrapped up for the year before tackling all your exciting new projects in January.

Download the complete year-end business checklist.

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