As a CEO, keeping your financials in order isn’t just good housekeeping, it’s mission critical. Whether you’re scaling operations, seeking funding, planning an exit, or simply trying to get a clear picture of where your business stands, having clean books gives you the power to lead with confidence.
At One 8 Solutions, we’ve helped trade, manufacturing, professional service, tech, and health companies streamline their financial systems.
Here’s a practical bookkeeping clean-up checklist to help you do the same – organize your financials, reduce risk, and plan for smarter growth.
Why Clean Financials Matter for CEOs
Organized books aren’t just about taxes and compliance. They help you:
- Make smarter decisions with accurate data
- Avoid costly errors and missed deductions
- Improve cash flow visibility
- Prepare for funding rounds, exits, or audit
- Focus on growth instead of financial guesswork
Ready to tidy up? Let’s get into the checklist.
1. Start with a Financial Health Check
Before you tackle reconciliations or workflows, step back and evaluate the current state of your financials.
- Do you trust your numbers?
- Are your books up to date?
- Is your chart of accounts well organized or chaotic?
- Are your financial reports meaningful—or confusing?
At One 8 Solutions, our financial systems audit often uncovers unrecorded liabilities, duplicate entries, or misclassified transactions that could skew your financial picture.
2. Clean Up Your Chart of Accounts (COA)
Your chart of accounts (COA) is the foundation of your financial system. A cluttered COA leads to messy reporting and miscategorized expenses.
What to do:
- Merge duplicate or unnecessary accounts.
- Rename vague accounts to match business operations.
- Archive or delete old, unused accounts.
- Align your COA with your reporting needs, especially if you track revenue by service line or department.
An optimized COA leads to better insights and cleaner reports.
3. Reconcile Accounts Monthly – No Exceptions
Regular account reconciliation prevents small issues from snowballing into costly errors.
Each month reconcile:
- Bank accounts
- Credit cards
- Merchant platforms (e.g., QuickBooks, Stripe, PayPal)
- Payroll clearing accounts
- Petty cash
Tools like QuickBooks Online, Xero, and Sage speed up reconciliation with bank feeds, auto-categorization, and built-in month-end workflows.
4. Tighten Up Accounts Receivable and Payable
Outstanding invoices and unpaid bills can distort your true financial position.
For Accounts Receivable (A/R):
- Review your aging report regularly
- Follow up on overdue invoices
- Write off bad debt when necessary—with proper documentation
For Accounts Payable (A/P):
- Reconcile to Vendor Statements
- Match bills to purchase orders
- Watch for duplicate entries
- Make timely payments to avoid late fees
Consider automating workflows with platforms like Relay or Dext, especially if you’re in a trade, manufacturing, or service-based business.
5. Tidy Up the General Ledger
Your general ledger (GL) captures every financial transaction. But if it’s messy, your reports will be too.
GL Clean-Up Checklist:
- Clean up uncategorized or miscategorized entries
- Add memos to journal entries where needed
- Investigate unusual balances or transactions
- Double-check owner draws, reimbursements, and loans
Clean GL = clean books. It’s as simple as that.
6. Document Your Financial Workflows
If your entire bookkeeping process lives in one person’s head, that’s a recipe for risk. Create standard operating procedures (SOPs) to improve consistency and scalability.
What to document:
- Month-end close procedures
- Reimbursement policies
- Billing and collection processes
- Vendor onboarding and payment workflows
Store these in shared drives like Google Workspace or project management tools like ClickUp or Notion.
7. Audit Payroll and Contractor Records
Payroll is often a hidden compliance risk. Review your payroll process regularly, especially if you manage both employees and contractors.
What to check:
- Employee vs contractor classification (W-2 vs 1099)
- Time tracking and pay rates
- Benefits and deductions
- Year-end filing preparation
Using modern payroll platforms like Intuit Payroll, ADP, helps reduce mistakes, automate filings, and keep everything synced with your books.
Need help choosing the right fit? One 8 Solutions can recommend a platform based on your team size, industry, and growth plans.
8. Stay Tax Ready All Year Long
Waiting until year-end to clean up your books? That’s a recipe for stress. Instead, get tax-ready all year long.
What to do:
- Track 1099 vendors and payments
- Stay current on sales tax filing and rates
- Properly classify travel, meals, and home office expenses
- Archive receipts and documentation
Avoid last minute scrambling. Schedule a Q3 tax prep check-in to fix any errors before they snowball into tax-time stress.
9. Create Actionable Financial Reports
Reports are only useful if they help you make decisions. As CEO, you should be reviewing:
- Monthly P&L and balance sheet
- Budget vs actuals
- A/R and A/P aging reports
- KPIs such as gross margin, labor costs, and cash flow
We often build custom dashboards in QuickBooks Online so our clients can track financial health in real time. A financial audit may also provide key information.
10. Partner with the Right Accounting Team
Cleaning up your books doesn’t mean you have to do it alone. A great client accounting services (CAS) provider does more than handle transactions; they become a trusted financial partner in your business.
At One 8 Solutions, we offer client accounting services (CAS) tailored for growth-minded CEOs who want more than basic bookkeeping.
We help you:
- Deliver clean, reconciled books every month
- Provide financial reports with insights, not just numbers
- Help implement automation and integrations
- Communicate clearly and proactively
- Align financial systems with your growth strategy
After 24 years in business, Founder and CEO Jonathan Bello knows what it takes to build clean, scalable financial systems. As an eight-time Top 100 ProAdvisor, he leads our team with a sharp eye for strategy and a deep commitment to your success.
Ready to Clean Up Your Books?
A streamlined financial system isn’t just good practice—it’s a strategic advantage. For ambitious CEOs, clean books mean better decisions, fewer surprises, and more confidence in your numbers.
Schedule your complimentary Zoom meeting with One 8 Solutions to get a tailored plan that eliminates clutter, boosts accuracy, and gives you the financial clarity you need to scale.
PS: In case you were wondering, the best time to clean up your books was last year. The second-best time? Right now.
