December has a way of sneaking up on you. One minute it’s September, and the next you’re staring down a pile of unreconciled statements and a CPA asking for documents you haven’t thought about since last January. The good news: if you carve out a few focused hours before December 31, you can close the year cleanly, hand off a tidy package to your tax preparer, and actually start January with a clear head.
Here’s what I walk through with my Las Vegas small business clients every fourth quarter and why each item genuinely matters.
1. Bank Reconciliations
This is always the starting point. Every bank account and credit card account needs to be reconciled through the last day of the year before you can trust any of the numbers that follow.
What you’re looking for: missing transactions that never made it into your books, duplicate entries from manual data entry, outstanding checks that haven’t cleared, and importantly any charges that look off. An unreconciled account is like trying to navigate Las Vegas with an outdated map. You might be close, but you’re not quite where you think you are.
If you’ve been keeping up with monthly reconciliations all year, December is just one more month. If you’ve let things slip, now is the time to catch up, not in February.
2. Accounts Receivable: What Are You Actually Owed?
Pull your accounts receivable aging report and look at it honestly. That report tells you who owes you money and how long they’ve been sitting on it. Anything past 60 or 90 days deserves a follow-up call before year-end.
More importantly: if you have invoices that are genuinely uncollectible, write them off before December 31. A bad debt you write off this year becomes a deduction this year. If you wait until January, you’ve missed the window.
Also scan for the opposite problem invoices that show as unpaid in your system but that you actually collected in cash. Those discrepancies have to be cleaned up before your books reflect reality.
3. Accounts Payable: What Do You Owe?
Flip the aging report around and look at your payables. Are all your vendor bills recorded, even ones you haven’t paid yet? If you received a service in December but the bill arrives in January, that expense still belongs to this year. Record it now.
Paying off outstanding bills before December 31 can also help you capture deductions in the current tax year. Your tax preparer will ask about this, so it’s worth going through the list methodically rather than guessing.
4. Payroll Records
Payroll is one of the areas where small errors create the biggest downstream headaches. Before year-end, confirm that all wages, bonuses, and commissions are accurately recorded. Verify that payroll taxes and withholdings were filed and paid on time throughout the year.
Also double-check employee addresses and tax elections W-2s go out in January, and a wrong address means a returned form and a frustrated employee. If any workers received taxable fringe benefits like a company vehicle or third-party sick pay, those need to be included in the current calendar year’s payroll totals.
This is also the moment to make sure your contractor versus employee classifications are held up. It’s a quiet but important question that surfaces every tax season.
5. Fixed Assets: What Did You Buy, and What Did You Retire?
Did you buy any equipment, vehicles, furniture, or technology this year? Those purchases don’t belong on your profit and loss statement as simple expenses, they belong on your balance sheet as assets, with depreciation recorded separately.
Conversely, did you dispose of, sell, or retire anything that’s still sitting on your asset register? Those items need to come off. An asset register that shows equipment you no longer own doesn’t just look messy it can create real tax filing errors.
Year-end is when you (or your bookkeeper) update the fixed asset register, log the annual depreciation for each item, and make sure the schedule is ready to hand off to your CPA. Section 179 elections and bonus depreciation decisions happen at the tax level, but your books need to be accurate before those conversations can even start.
6. 1099 Vendor Information
This one trips up more Las Vegas business owners than almost any other item on this list. If you paid a contractor, freelancer, consultant, or unincorporated service provider during the year, you may be required to issue them a Form 1099-NEC. The IRS deadline to get those forms to recipients and filed is January 31 which means you need the information in hand well before then.
What you need from every 1099-eligible vendor: a completed Form W-9 with their legal name, tax ID (SSN or EIN), entity type, and current mailing address. Run a report of all vendor payments for the year and flag anyone who crossed the applicable reporting threshold. Note how each vendor was paid checks, ACH, credit card, and payment apps are treated differently under IRS rules, so the payment method affects whether you’re required to file.
The honest advice here: collect W-9s before you issue the first payment to a new vendor, not in a scramble every January. But if you’re behind on that, December is your window to fix it.
7. Owner Draws
This one is specific to sole proprietors, single-member LLCs, and S-corp owners, and it’s frequently misclassified. An owner who draws money you take out of the business for personal use is not a business expense. It reduces your equity, but it doesn’t belong on your profit and loss statement as a deduction.
If draws are coded as expenses in your books, your net income is understated, your financial statements are misleading, and your CPA has to sort it out later. Go through the year and make sure every transfer to yourself is categorized correctly. This is a small cleanup that makes a big difference when it comes time to read your own numbers.
A Note on Timing
None of this has to be done in a single afternoon. The point of a checklist is to move through it deliberately, reconcile first, then clean up receivables and payables, then payroll, then fixed assets, then vendors, then equity. Each step sets up the next one. By the time you get to December 31, you want your books to reflect every transaction that actually happened this year, nothing more and nothing less.
Las Vegas businesses operate in a fast-moving economy. The hospitality industry, contractors, service businesses, and retail all share the same end-of-year crunch. Getting your books clean before the calendar flips is one of the best gifts you can give yourself going into tax season.
FAQ
When should I start my year-end accounting review?
Ideally, start in October or November so you have time to chase down missing documents, collect W-9s, and make any corrections before December 31. Waiting until mid-December leaves no room for surprises.
Do I have to reconcile every bank account, or just the main one?
Every account checking, savings, credit cards, lines of credit, and payment processing accounts like Stripe or Square. A reconciliation is only useful if it’s complete.
What is the deadline to send 1099-NEC forms to vendors?
The IRS requires 1099-NEC forms to be sent to recipients and filed with the IRS by January 31. Build your internal deadline a few weeks earlier so you’re not rushing.
What happens if owner draws are recorded as expenses?
Your net income will appear lower than it actually is, which distorts your financial picture and can cause problems during tax preparation. Your CPA will need to correct it, which adds time and cost to the process.
Does Gina Webb Accounting help with year-end cleanup?
Yes. Year-end catch-up and cleanup is one of the most common things clients come to us for. Whether your books are a few months behind or you just need a second set of eyes before the close, we can help you get there.
Ready to Close the Year Clean?
If working through this checklist surfaced more questions than answers or if you’d rather hand it off to someone who does this every day that’s exactly what Gina Webb Accounting is here for.
We work with small businesses across Las Vegas, Henderson, and the surrounding area. Schedule a no obligation consultation with Gina today before the calendar runs out.
