PART
5

Monthly, Quarterly, and Annual Activities

Scorecards are finite in that they always cover a particular time period. Similarly, some accounting activities and filings must total the transactions from a particular time period. These activities might consist of sensible checkpoints for monitoring your company’s finances. In other cases, they serve as the trigger for filing and paying tax returns or submitting other regulatory reporting. In Part 5, we help you stay on top of these ongoing requirements for your business.

First, we go over the end-of-month procedures you should perform and what to look for in the balance sheet and trial balance each month end. From there, we move on to quarterly activities, which typically involve employee and vendor tax reporting. Next, we look at the annual activities: business and personal tax returns. The part concludes with a rulebook for how long you need to keep particular types of business and accounting information.