1. Preserve the source document
Maintain sales invoices, purchase invoices, debit and credit notes, agreements and material correspondence in an orderly digital or physical record. A ledger entry should be capable of being traced back to its supporting document.
2. Reconcile bank and cash activity
Bank accounts should be reconciled regularly. Unidentified receipts, stale payments and transfers between accounts should be resolved rather than allowed to accumulate. Cash records should be supported by vouchers and reviewed for unusual or unsupported entries.
3. Keep statutory records aligned
Turnover, purchases, tax deductions and tax payments recorded in the books should be compared with the relevant returns and portal records. Differences should be documented with their reason and proposed treatment.
4. Review balances, not only transactions
Receivables, payables, advances, loans, deposits and statutory balances require periodic confirmation and ageing. Long-outstanding or unusual amounts generally become harder to resolve at year-end.
5. Close each month deliberately
A simple month-end process—posting missing documents, reconciling accounts, reviewing tax ledgers and recording important estimates—usually produces more dependable information than a large annual clean-up.