Daily Bookkeeping Checklist

Refresh the Plaid / direct bank feed in QBO or Xero for every operating account, credit card, and merchant deposit account. If a feed is stuck (common after a bank password rotation or MFA prompt), reconnect before categorizing — partial feeds create duplicate entries when they catch up.

Apply bank rules where they exist; for new vendors, post to the correct expense account rather than dumping into Ask My Accountant. Tag class, location, or customer dimension if the client uses them — this is much harder to retrofit at month-end.

Owner draws from operating to personal, credit-card payments from operating, and sweeps to savings should match as transfers, not post as expenses. Unmatched transfers double-count cash and inflate expenses.

Anything posted to Ask My Accountant or where the vendor name doesn't tie to a known purpose. Bundle all questions into one client message at end of day rather than pinging throughout — clients respond better to a single list.

Review the OCR pull for vendor, date, total, and tax. Publish matched receipts to QBO/Xero so they attach to the corresponding transaction; reject blurry or duplicate scans back to the client.

Any new vendor paid for services should have a W-9 on file before the second payment — chasing W-9s at year-end for 1099-NEC prep is the single biggest avoidable headache in January.

Pull the day's deliveries, completed jobs, or time entries and invoice from QBO/Xero. Confirm the customer's PO number, billing email, and sales-tax setup before sending — corrections after delivery slow collections.

Match ACH, lockbox, Stripe, and check deposits to open invoices. Watch for short-pays — apply on account or as a credit memo with a note rather than force-closing the invoice, so the dispute stays visible.

Pull aging by customer (30/60/90/120). Anything 60+ should be reviewed for collections action; anything 120+ flag to the controller for write-off discussion at month-end.

Run the cadence: friendly reminder at 7 days past due, firmer notice at 30, collections call at 60. Document each touch in the customer note so the next person picking up the account sees the history.

Sync new bills from the AP automation queue into QBO/Xero. For inventory-related bills, run the three-way match (PO + receiving + invoice) before posting; for service vendors, confirm coding to the right expense account and class.

Pay anything due in the next 5 business days. Take early-pay discounts (2/10 net 30) if cash allows. Hold disputed bills with a note in the vendor record; never delete a disputed bill from the queue.

For top-volume vendors, tie their statement balance to the A/P sub-ledger weekly. Missing bills surface here before they hit collections; duplicate bills surface here before they get paid twice.

Refresh the rolling forecast in Float, Dryrun, or the firm's spreadsheet. Pull today's actuals into the latest week; reforecast remaining weeks based on current A/R aging and scheduled bill pay.

Most engagement letters set a minimum operating-cash floor (often two weeks of fixed costs). If today's closing balance is below it, the controller and owner need to know before tomorrow's bill run, not at month-end.

Send the cash position, the upcoming 7-day disbursements, and the suggested action (delay non-critical AP, draw on the line of credit, accelerate a customer collection). Decision belongs to the controller or owner; surfacing the data is the bookkeeper's job.

Confirm Avalara or TaxJar captured today's taxable sales by jurisdiction. Watch for new ship-to states approaching the $100K economic-nexus threshold — flag to the partner before the client trips registration retroactively.

Export the day's journal report and bank feed log to the client's secure folder. Required by the firm's WISP under IRS Pub 4557 — daily backups protect against ransomware and cloud-vendor outages.

Record time against the client engagement before signing off. Same-day entry keeps realization data accurate; reconstructing time on Friday afternoon for the whole week is how scope creep goes invisible.