Tax season has you stressed? You’re not alone. But here’s the good news: getting your books “accountant-ready” doesn’t have to take all weekend (or all month).

In this post, I’m giving you a simple 30-minute checklist you can use to prep your books fast, reduce back-and-forth with your accounting professional, and avoid the three mistakes that drive accountants crazy.

I’m going to reference how I do this inside FreshBooks, but this checklist works in any bookkeeping system (QuickBooks Online, Xero, spreadsheets—same concept).

And yes: this can help you avoid missing deductions and potentially save money on taxes, because clean books usually mean fewer assumptions, fewer errors, and fewer “wait, what is this charge?” emails in March.

In this article: The 30-minute “accountant-ready” checklist)

• Step 1: Make sure all transactions are in and categorized
• Step 2: Reconcile your accounts (don’t skip this)
• Step 3: Review your Profit & Loss like a CFO
• Step 4: Don’t forget out-of-pocket expenses
• Step 5: Separate owner pay correctly
• Step 6: Export (or share) the right reports
• The last thing most business owners forget
• Quick tools and next steps
• Sponsor disclaimer
• SEO keywords

The 30-minute “accountant-ready” checklist

Here’s your game plan. If you do nothing else, do these basic accounting organizational steps in order.

Each one builds on the last.

Step 1: Make sure all transactions are recorded and categorized

First, confirm that all income and expenses that hit your bank/credit cards are showing inside your bookkeeping system and are categorized into the right buckets.

In FreshBooks, this means:

• your bank feeds are connected (or you’ve uploaded a CSV)
• bank transactions are categorized so your reports reflect reality

Why this matters: your accountant can’t give you accurate tax answers based on incomplete info. And if your books are missing transactions, your tax return may be missing deductions.

Or overstating income.

Step 2: Reconcile your accounts (this is the #1 thing people skip)

Mistake #1 that accountants hate: categorizing transactions but skipping bank reconciliation.

Reconciliation is simply comparing what your software says your bank balance is vs. what your bank statement says it is.

Why it matters:

• bank feeds can miss financial transactions
• bank feeds can duplicate transactions
• transfers can get miscategorized
• payments can be recorded twice (especially if you’re using bill pay tools)

In FreshBooks, reconciliation is built into the workflow so you don’t have to line-by-line compare manually.

In other systems, it may look a little different, but the goal is the same: your software balances should match real life.

If you only do one step from this list, do this one.

Step 3: Review your Profit & Loss (P&L) before sending it

Your Profit & Loss report is the main thing your accountant needs for taxes (especially if you file Schedule C).

But don’t just export it and send it over.

Take 5 minutes to scan it and ask:

• Does income look wildly too high or too low?
• Are there spikes that don’t make sense?
• Are there big totals sitting in vague categories?

Mistake #2: Dumping everything into “Miscellaneous”

Accountants hate this because:

• it triggers questions (“what is this?”)
• it can hide deductible categories (and can sometimes be an audit red flag)
• it makes it harder to map expenses correctly on the tax return

If you truly don’t know where something goes, pick your best guess and leave a note for your accountant.

Communication beats mystery every time.

Step 4: Make sure you didn’t miss out-of-pocket expenses

Mistake #3: forgetting expenses paid personally (or in cash).

Common ones:

• small supplies bought on a personal card
• software subscription on your personal card
• mileage
• business meals paid personally
• home office-related expenses (internet, phone) when applicable

In FreshBooks, you can add these manually and even snap a photo of the receipt in the app.

FreshBooks also has mileage tracking, which can make this part much easier if you use it consistently.

Even if your amounts are small, they can add up.

And if you’re already doing the work of getting tax-ready, you might as well capture what you’re allowed to deduct.

Step 5: Track owner pay the right way (draws vs expenses)

This one matters more than people realize.

If you’re a sole proprietor or LLC taxed as a sole prop/partnership, you generally do not run payroll for yourself.

Your “pay” is typically an owner draw (equity), not an expense.

So if you accidentally categorized owner transfers as “Wages” or “Contract Labor” or “Meals” (I’ve seen it all), your Profit & Loss (and financial health) can get distorted.

And that can confuse your accountant or impact taxes.

In FreshBooks, you can categorize owner pay to an equity-style account (often called Owner’s Equity or Owner’s Draw).

The key is: owner pay should not live in your business expenses unless you’re running payroll as an S Corp/C Corp.

If you are an S Corp, then yes—your wages should be on payroll and recorded accordingly. Different rules, different setup.

Step 6: Export (or share) the right reports

At minimum, most accountants want:

• Profit & Loss for the full year
• Balance Sheet (especially if you’re an entity that needs one, or you have loans/assets)

Depending on your situation, they may also want:

• a General Ledger
• 1099 contractor report
• owner distribution totals
• mileage totals
• list of fixed assets/equipment purchases

FreshBooks makes it easy to export reports as PDF/Excel—or you can invite your accountant into the system so they can pull what they need.

Either way: send clean, complete reports once, and you’ll reduce the “can you resend that?” emails later.

The last thing most business owners forget (and it could save you money)

Before you wrap up, spend 2 minutes checking your personal card/bank activity for anything that may have been business-related:

• phone bill portion
• internet portion (if you work from home)
• one-off business purchases you forgot to log

If you find something, add a manual transaction so it’s captured. More complete books = fewer missed deductions.

Quick tools and next steps

If you want to try FreshBooks (or you’re already using it and want to streamline this whole workflow), you can check out my link here:
https://www.jamietrull.com/freshbooks

Still deciding which accounting/bookkeeping software is best for your business? Take the quiz here:
https://jamietrull.com/accountingquiz

Sponsor Disclaimer: This post may include affiliate or partner links (including FreshBooks). If you use them, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. I only recommend tools I believe can genuinely help small business owners stay informed, organized, and profitable. This content is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for advice on your specific situation from your tax advisor.

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Welcome and Introduction

If tax season has stressed, you’re not alone.

But what if I told you that getting your books ready for your accountant could take less than 30 minutes? Yep.

And you don’t need to be a numbers nerd like me to make it happen.

So today I’m gonna walk you through a checklist you can use. To prep your books fast.

Now I’m specifically gonna walk you through this checklist showing you what I do in FreshBooks.

However, if you use a different software, it can work for you similarly in that software.

Hi everyone. I’m Jamie Trull, CPA, turned Financial Educator for small business owners.

And here on this channel, I love to bring you all the things you need to stay informed, organized.

And profitable in your business finances. So that’s something that you wanna do.

Make sure to subscribe.

So if you’re looking to save time, avoid a bunch of back and forth with your accountant and maybe even save some money on your taxes.

This is the video for you.

Accounting Software for Small Business: Quick Prep Checklist Using Accounting Bookkeeping Software

So not only am I gonna show you how to do this in FreshBooks, but I’m also gonna tell you how to avoid the three mistakes that will drive accountants crazy.

Now whether you’re using a different software or you’re considering FreshBooks or maybe you already signed up for it, this video is for you.

If you are just now deciding to sign up for FreshBooks or learn more about it, definitely make sure to check out my special link, jamietrull.com/freshbooks so that you can save.

I try to negotiate the best deals possible for you on the accounting software that is out there, so definitely check that out and stay with me until the end.

Because I’m gonna tell you about the one big thing that many business owners forget to do, and it could be costing them all right?

Now let’s jump into the checklist to get yourself ready for tax time and talk about those mistakes that we can avoid along the way.

Bookkeeping Software & Accounting Tools: Recording Transactions for Accurate Financial Reports

Now the first thing on that checklist is to make sure that all of your transactions are recorded and categorized.

That means that all the income that came in and all the expenses that went out of your business are showing up within your accounting software.

And not only are they showing up, you have also categorized them in into the right buckets to show up on your financial reports.

Now, this brings me to mistake number one.

Which is skipping reconciliation.

A lot of business owners think that once they’ve categorized all of their transactions, that that’s really all they need to do.

However, if you don’t reconcile your accounts, which essentially is just comparing what’s in your accounting system to your actual bank statements, you may miss some things.

One of the most common things that can happen.

In situations with any kind of accounting software is you may have duplicate transactions or missing transactions, and it can be really hard to know that if you’re not doing any kind of official reconciliation.

Thankfully, FreshBooks makes that really easy to do directly inside the platform so that you don’t have to sit there and go line by line comparing your accounting software to your bank statement.

Review Your Profit and Loss For Just a Few Seconds (at least)

Alright, moving on to checklist item number two, and that is reviewing my favorite statement of all.

The profit and loss.

Now you’re gonna do this by going to the reports section within FreshBooks and scrolling down to accounting reports, and that’s where you can find all of those.

And from there you can click on your profit and loss, and that is the key report that your accountant is going to need in order to do your taxes.

Best Accounting Software & Accounting Apps: Reviewing Financial Reports

Now, importantly, you don’t just want to pull down this report and send it on over to your accountant.

You want to spend some time actually looking at this.

Do you see any spikes or things that don’t make sense that you wanna dig into a little bit more?

Is there anything that stands out to you or looks like it might be miscategorized.

This is a great time to really drill it down into the software and see what’s making up some of those categories.

It’s also gonna help you get more familiar with what’s going on in the finance side of your business, which is always a good thing.

Now, that brings me to mistake number two that your accountant does not love, and that’s dumping everything into some kind of miscellaneous expense.

Now doing this can cause a lot of confusion, a lot of questions from your accountant about what those things actually are because they might actually need to be categorized somewhere else.

So if you do have any kind of miscellaneous expenses, make sure to communicate that to your accountant so they understand where that needs to go on the tax return.

Cash Flow Insights

Not only that, I don’t love miscellaneous expenses because it can also be a little bit of a red flag for audit.

Auditors are always curious what is in that. Account, especially if it is significant compared to your overall expenses.

So just make sure you’re breaking down those expenses as clearly as you possibly can.

And when in doubt, ask your accountant.

Now, the third checklist item is now to make sure you aren’t missing anything.

Now, this can sometimes happen when expenses are paid.

Personally, maybe it didn’t actually run through a business bank account or business credit card.

And so therefore it’s not pulling into your accounting system.

Free Accounting Software & Free Bookkeeping Software: Tracking Expenses and Accounting Services Accuracy

And in that case, we may need to make a journal entry to add it.

Or at least ask your accountant how they want you to handle business expenses that were paid out of personal money.

Now that leads me to mistake number three, which is forgetting about out of pocket expenses.

That includes things like cash purchases or mileage or other expenses that you didn’t run through your business accounts.

Now the great thing is FreshBooks actually allows you to take a picture on the go of a receipt that maybe you paid for personally.

And then you can add it right then and there into your books so you don’t miss it.

Not only that, FreshBooks also has built in mileage tracking on the FreshBooks App that allows it to track you when you are traveling for business so that all of your mileage is in one place.

Now, the fourth thing that you wanna make sure that you’re doing before you’re sending your records over to your accountant is to make sure you have tracked owner pay.

You’re gonna wanna have clear records of what you took out of the business, specifically if you’re taking draws from the business.

And those draws should be considered separately from the expenses in your business. Those should not generally be showing up as an expense on your profit and loss.

Instead, any draws that you made to yourself as the owner should be coming out of equity instead, which shows up on your balance sheet.

Importantly, the only time you should have amounts paid to yourself showing up as an expense on your profit and loss is if you are a salaried employee.

Free Accounting App & Best Free Accounting App: Exporting Reports and Using Accounting Apps Efficiently

For a corporation, so if your business is not an S Corp or a C corporation, you actually don’t pay yourself an employee salary and instead you just take draws.

So that’s something to make sure that is categorized correctly on your reports, or it could accidentally impact the amount of taxes that you pay.

Now if you’re using FreshBooks, that account is going to be called something like Owners Equity, or you can even add a new account if you want to specifically have an account called Owners Draw.

Again, just make sure that you’re adding that account.

As an equity account and not as an expense account. And the last thing on the checklist, number five, is to export all of those key reports.

That’s gonna include your profit and loss and your balance sheet, and potentially any other reports your accountant has said that they would like to have from you.

Now, thankfully, FreshBooks makes this really easy.

You can just go into the report that you want to send, and you can either send it directly to their email without even having.

To download it, or you can go ahead and download it in Excel or PDF and send it over that way.

Additionally, you also have the option of inviting your accountant into FreshBooks so that they can pull the reports themselves and save you some time.

Now, even if you’re just getting started in FreshBooks, you can do a lot very quickly.

Accounting Software & Bookkeeping Software: Final Checklist to Improve Cash Flow

You can actually go in there and set up your bank accounts and import previous transactions that you need to get yourself tax ready for the year you’re working on.

Depending on how far back your bank is able to go, you may be able to go all the way back to the beginning of the previous year if you’d like to.

Or you also have the option of downloading a CSV file from your bank or credit card and uploading that directly into FreshBooks so that you can get started categorizing everything.

And this will help you get your books tax ready super fast.

If you wanna learn a little bit more about switching to FreshBooks, maybe you’re on QuickBooks and you’re looking for another alternative, check out this video next where I showed you exactly how to switch in under an hour.

Final Tip: Stay Organized

And finally, the last big mistake that a lot of people make or miss out on is they don’t go through their personal expenses and figure out if there was anything that potentially could have been a business expense.

So for example, things like your cell phone bill or even your internet bill if you work from home, could actually be deductible either in full or in part depending on your use for business purposes.

And who doesn’t want some extra deductions that help you reduce your tax bill.

So take a few minutes and go through your personal bank accounts and personal credit cards and make sure there isn’t anything that you missed.

If you did, you can easily add a manual transaction into FreshBooks to capture it, and that’s it.

Your complete tax prep checklist in less than 30 minutes. Now if you’re tired of scrambling at tax time, it might be time to change the system that you’re using.

And if you’re still evaluating options for what bookkeeping software is best for you, definitely take this quiz at jamietrull.com/accounting quiz that we recently rolled out to help people decide what is the best fit for that.

And of course, if you decide that FreshBooks is the right fit. Make sure to use my link to sign up to save money. Jamietrull.com/freshbooks.

Wishing you an easy and stress-free tax season. I’ll see you next time.