Small Business Bookkeeping Checklist: Your Complete Guide to Financial Organization

Running a small business means juggling multiple responsibilities, and bookkeeping often gets pushed to the bottom of the priority list. I’ve watched too many entrepreneurs struggle with this. This comprehensive guide breaks down bookkeeping tasks by frequency—what needs attention daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. I’ve included specific steps for ecommerce stores bookkeeping, highlighted the mistakes that cost businesses the most money, and provided recommendations on tools and when to bring in outside help. The goal is giving you a practical system that works with your schedule, not against it.

Daily Tasks: Building Your Foundation Through Small Actions

The most successful business owners I know spend 10-20 minutes each day on their books. It sounds almost too simple, but consistency here prevents massive headaches later.

Record every transaction as it happens

When a client pays an invoice, log that payment immediately with the invoice number, amount, and payment method. For expenses, snap a photo of the receipt right at the point of purchase—whether it’s fuel for deliveries, supplies for your shop, or lunch with a potential client. 

Categorize it on the spot

Travel, supplies, meals and entertainment. My catering friend started using her phone to photograph receipts the moment she got back to her van, and it eliminated the shoebox problem entirely.

Deposit cash promptly

If you’re taking cash payments at markets, events, or in-person sales, get that money into your business account the same day. Document the source and amount. One coffee shop owner I worked with discovered she was losing track of about $200 weekly just from delayed deposits and vague notes.

Track your petty cash religiously

Small purchases add up faster than you’d think. Keep a simple log—date, amount, what it was for, and attach whatever receipt or proof you have. Review bank notifications when they pop up on your phone. Fraudulent charges, duplicate billings, and merchant errors happen more often than people realize. Catching them within 24 hours makes disputes infinitely easier.

Don’t forget mileage

Apps can auto-track this, or keep a simple log in your vehicle with date, destination, purpose, and kilometers. At current CRA rates, this becomes a significant deduction.

Why does this daily approach matter so much? Because memory fades quickly. That receipt from Tuesday afternoon that seemed obvious at the time becomes a mystery by Friday. Details matter during audits or when you’re trying to understand where your money actually goes.

Weekly Review: Staying Current and Catching Issues Early

Choose a consistent day—many business owners prefer Friday afternoon—and block 45 minutes to an hour for your weekly review. This becomes your financial pulse check.

Start by reconciling your bank and credit card accounts

Pull up your statements and match every single transaction against what you’ve entered in your system. Look for anything that doesn’t line up: cleared checks you haven’t recorded, pending transactions that finally posted, or charges you don’t recognize. Address discrepancies immediately while the details are fresh.

Check categorization

Marketing expenses should be separate from office supplies. Cost of goods sold needs to be distinct from operating costs. The more precise your categories, the better your reports will be. I’ve seen businesses save thousands in taxes simply by properly categorizing expenses they’d been lumping under “miscellaneous.”

Follow up on unpaid invoices

If something passed its due date, send a friendly reminder. Many small businesses lose significant cash flow just from being too passive about collections. Set up a system: payment due dates, first reminder at 7 days overdue, second reminder at 15 days, phone call at 30 days.

Update payroll information if you have employees or contractors

Record hours worked, wages owed, and any deductions required. Even if you process payroll monthly, tracking hours weekly prevents errors and disputes. For inventory-based businesses, do quick spot checks on your fast-moving items. Running out of popular products costs you sales, while overstock ties up cash. A quick visual scan helps you stay ahead of ordering needs.

Create weekly cashflow

How much came in versus how much went out? If you’re consistently negative, you need to address it before it becomes a crisis. This weekly snapshot helped my catering friend realize her seasonal patterns and plan accordingly—she now saves more aggressively during busy months to cover slower periods.

Monthly Deep Dive: Understanding Your Financial Picture

Set aside 2-4 hours in the middle or end of each month for your comprehensive financial review. This is where you shift from recording transactions to actually analyzing what they mean for your business.

Generate profit and loss statement

This shows your revenue minus all expenses for the month, revealing whether you’re actually profitable or just busy. Look at trends month over month—are costs creeping up? Is revenue growing? The balance sheet gives you a snapshot of everything you own versus everything you owe. Your accounts receivable and payable reports show who owes you money and what bills you need to pay.

Calculate and remit your sales tax obligations

Depending on your province and situation, this might be HST, GST, or PST. Pull the reports from your accounting software, verify the calculations, and file electronically before the deadline. Missing these deadlines triggers penalties that eat into your profits unnecessarily.

Record accrued expenses

Your monthly utilities, subscriptions, and services should be recognized even if the invoice hasn’t arrived. This gives you a more accurate picture of your true obligations. Compare your actual spending against your budget. Where did you exceed expectations? Where did you come in under? Don’t just note the differences—figure out why they happened and whether you need to adjust your budget or your spending.

Update depreciation schedules for your capital assets

Vehicles, equipment, computers, and furniture lose value over time, and properly recording this depreciation affects your tax situation. Most accounting software can automate this once you set it up correctly.

Annual Closing: Sealing the Year and Preparing for Taxes

Year-end requires the most intensive effort, which is why smart business owners start in October or November rather than waiting until December. Spread this work over several weeks to avoid the last-minute crush.

Begin with your trial balance

This report should show that your debits equal your credits exactly. If they don’t, you have an error somewhere that needs finding and fixing. Go through every account with scrutiny. Organize all your receipts and supporting documentation into clear categories by type and date. While you should have been doing this monthly, year-end is when you verify everything is complete and accessible.

Conduct a complete physical inventory count if you sell products.

Count every item, value it using your chosen method (FIFO, LIFO, or weighted average), and compare it to what your system says you should have. Investigate significant discrepancies—they might indicate theft, damage, recording errors, or system problems.

Compile all the tax slips you need to issue

T4s for employees, T4As for contractors, T5s for investment income if applicable. The deadlines for distributing these are strict, and penalties for missing them are substantial. Make all your final adjusting entries for the year. This includes things like prepaid expenses (you paid for a year of insurance but only used ten months), accrued expenses, depreciation catch-up, and any necessary reserves.

Close your books for the fiscal year

This means finalizing all the numbers and rolling the net income or loss into retained earnings. Open a fresh set of books for the new fiscal year. Back up all your financial data to multiple locations—your computer, an external drive, and cloud storage. I’ve seen businesses lose years of records to computer crashes, fires, or theft.

Adapting This Checklist for Small Ecommerce Businesses

Ecommerce operations face unique bookkeeping challenges that brick-and-mortar businesses don’t encounter. Multiple sales channels, high transaction volumes, returns and refunds, payment processing fees, and complex inventory tracking all require special attention.

Daily tasks in ecommerce

You need seamless integration between your sales platforms and your accounting system. Shopify, WooCommerce, Etsy, Amazon—each sale should flow automatically into your books with the gross sale amount, fees deducted, shipping charged to the customer, and your actual shipping cost all recorded separately. Recording the cost of goods sold for each transaction is critical for understanding your true profitability.

Weekly Tasks in ecommerce

Your weekly reconciliation needs to account for the fact that platform deposits typically happen in batches and may be several days after the actual sale. You’re reconciling against deposit amounts that already have fees deducted, so your books need to show the gross sale, the fees as expenses, and the net deposit. Track returns and refunds carefully—they affect your revenue, cost of goods sold (when inventory comes back), and customer metrics.

Monthly tasks for ecommerce

Monthly tasks for ecommerce should include a detailed analysis of returns. If a particular product has a high return rate, investigate why—poor description, quality issues, or sizing problems? Categorize all your platform-specific costs properly: Shopify subscription fees, Amazon FBA fees, payment processing fees, advertising costs on each platform. These need to be separated to understand which channels are actually profitable.

Inventory Management

Inventory management becomes more complex with ecommerce. You might have stock in multiple warehouses, FBA centers, or fulfillment services. Your system needs to track inventory across all locations and sync with your sales channels to prevent overselling. Quarterly and annual tasks should include reconciling your system inventory with physical counts at all locations.

Sales Tax

Sales tax for ecommerce is particularly tricky because you might have nexus (tax obligations) in multiple provinces or even states if you sell cross-border. Each jurisdiction has different rules, rates, and thresholds. This complexity is exactly why ecommerce bookkeeping services or specialized retail bookkeeping services often make sense for online sellers. These services handle the platform integrations, multi-jurisdiction taxes, and inventory complexities that overwhelm most general bookkeepers.

Moving Forward with Confidence

Solid bookkeeping practices are like compound interest for your business—the benefits accumulate over time in ways that aren’t always immediately visible but become substantial. You’ll make better purchasing decisions because you know your real margins. You’ll manage cash flow more effectively because you can see patterns. You’ll reduce tax bills because you capture every legitimate deduction with proper documentation.

Growing businesses need more than just tax filing. SAL Accounting CPA Firm offers monthly bookkeeping & CFO services to keep your finances clear & your business scaling. Feel free to always ask for free consultancy in professional bookkeeping services in Toronto.

📧 Website: salaccounting.ca

📧 Email: tax@salaccounting.ca

📍 Location: 330 Bay St. Unit 1401, Toronto, ON M5J 0B6 | 55 Village Centre Pl, Suit 734, Mississauga, ON L4Z 1V9, Canada