Working with your bookkeeper in BizHub365: a monthly rhythm that saves you both time

Most of the friction between a small business owner and their bookkeeper is not about money. It is about timing. Records arrive in a heap three weeks late, half the bank lines have no explanation, and the bookkeeper spends the first hour of the session asking what things were. A steady monthly routine fixes most of that, and it does not need anything fancy.

This post sets out one way to run that routine in BizHub365, from the business owner's side. It is not tax advice, and it does not replace the working relationship you have with your accountant. It is a checklist for the things you can control each month.

What a bookkeeper needs from you each month

Your bookkeeper is not asking for a box of paperwork at year end. They want the same few things every month, on the same day, in the same place. When those arrive on time, the work goes quickly and questions come up while they still make sense.

In practice that means:

• Sales invoices and quotes issued, with the payments received against them.
• Bank activity for the month, with every line either matched or explained.
• Expenses, each with a receipt or a note saying where it went.
• Payroll totals for the month if you run PAYE for staff.
• A short list of anything unusual, such as a refund, a deposit, a large one-off purchase or a payment from a customer who is not the account holder.

BizHub365 keeps invoices, quotes, payments, credit notes, expenses and bank lines in one system, so these items come from the same place rather than four different apps. That matters most in the first month you switch over, but it also means you are not reconstructing the month from memory when the deadline arrives.

Tidying expenses and matching bank lines before handover

The single biggest saving in time comes from doing a short tidy-up before anything goes to your bookkeeper. Set aside an hour at the end of each month, or on a fixed day such as the first working day of the next month. Work through the list in this order:

1. Import the bank lines for the month using bank import.
2. Run matching so that receipts from customers link to the invoices they pay. Smart matching does most of the obvious ones.
3. Work through what is left. Each unmatched line is either a payment you have not recorded, a payment you have not raised an invoice for, or a personal item that should not be in the business account at all.
4. Enter the expenses that did not go through the bank, and attach the receipts you have.
5. Check for duplicates. A card payment that appears twice, or an invoice entered once as a quote and again as an invoice, creates confusion that is slow to untangle later.

You do not need to be a bookkeeper to do this. You need to know what each payment was for, which is usually obvious to the owner and much less obvious to someone who has never met your customers. Doing the first pass yourself means your bookkeeper is checking your work rather than starting from scratch.

Notes and tags to explain unusual items

Every business has a few transactions that look odd on paper. A deposit that was refunded in a different month. A supplier who was paid in two parts. A customer who pays from a partner's account. None of these is a problem in itself. They become a problem when nobody remembers why they happened.

BizHub365 lets you keep notes and tags alongside your customer records, so the explanation sits next to the thing it explains. A few habits make this work well:

• Write the note at the time, not later. One line is enough: "Deposit refunded, job cancelled, see email from 14 March."
• Use a consistent tag for each kind of unusual item, such as "refund", "part-payment" or "third-party payer". Tags you can search for are far quicker to pull up at month end than a list of notes you have to read through.
• Mention the note in your monthly list to your bookkeeper, so they know to look at it.

The aim is not to write a diary. It is to make sure the one or two unusual items each month do not become a question you cannot answer six months from now.

Agreeing what is shared and when

The routine only works if both sides know what is being sent, in what form, and by when. Agree these points before the first month, and write them down in a short email you can both refer back to.

Cover these questions:

• Which day of the month does the bookkeeper need the records? Pick a date that gives you time to do the tidy-up described above.
• What exactly is sent? For example, a set of invoice and payment reports, a bank activity extract, the expenses list with receipts, and the notes list.
• In what format? If you are passing records on as exports or files, agree the format first so nobody has to convert anything by hand.
• Who does the chasing? If a bank line is unclear, decide whether the owner answers within two working days or the bookkeeper raises it on a call.
• What counts as closed? Some bookkeepers want the month locked once they have reviewed it. Others want corrections flagged rather than made. Know which applies to you.

There is no single right answer. The point is that neither of you is guessing about the other's expectations in the middle of a busy week.

Questions to ask your accountant

If you are starting this routine, or changing how you work with a new bookkeeper or accountant, it helps to ask a few specific questions at the first meeting. These are the ones that tend to prevent the most rework later:

• Which day of the month do you need the records, and do you want them before or after I have matched the bank?
• How do you want expenses presented? By supplier, by category, or by the way I have tagged them?
• What do you do with a bank line I cannot explain? Should I leave it unmatched, add a note, or ask you?
• Which kinds of unusual item do you need a note for? Refunds and part-payments are common, but your list may differ.
• What do you need from me at year end that you do not need each month, so I can start collecting it now?
• Is there anything you would rather I did not change once it has been reviewed?

Write the answers down. Most of the friction in a new working relationship comes from things that were assumed rather than agreed.

If you want to try this routine on your own records first, you can start a trial. Start your free 14-day trial at bizhub365.co.uk/mybusiness/onboarding. It is a 14-day free trial. We take your card when you sign up and charge it when the trial ends, so cancel before then to pay nothing. Then 19 pounds a month or 190 pounds a year; the payroll add-on is extra and is not part of the trial.