Weekly Bookkeeping Checklist

Refresh the Plaid / direct bank feeds in QBO or Xero for every operating, savings, and credit-card account. Flag any account where the feed has been disconnected for more than 48 hours — stale feeds are the most common cause of duplicate transactions when they reconnect.

Work the For Review tab to zero. Apply or update bank rules where vendor patterns repeat. Anything that genuinely cannot be coded goes to Ask My Accountant with a note — never let suspense become the dumping ground.

Sort the week's transactions by GL account and scan for misposts — meals coded to office supplies, owner draws coded to wages, capitalizable assets expensed to repairs. Reclass directly in the transaction rather than via journal entry so the bank feed memo stays attached.

Run a mini-rec for each bank and credit-card account through the most recent weekend. Tie book balance to the bank's available balance net of in-transit items. Flag any uncleared check older than 30 days for the stale-check follow-up step below.

Triangulate the variance: duplicate bank-feed entries, missing deposit, NSF return not booked, or wire fee that posted without a matching bill. Document the root cause in the workpaper so the same gotcha is recognized faster next week. Escalate variances over $1,000 to the controller before close.

Generate invoices for fixed-fee retainers, time-and-materials hours from the prior week, and any milestone-based deliverables. Verify the customer PO number, sales-tax jurisdiction, and payment terms before sending — corrections after delivery delay collection by a full cycle.

Match ACH, wire, lockbox, and Stripe deposits to the open invoices in QBO. For partial payments, post against the oldest open invoice unless the remittance specifies otherwise. Never leave deposits sitting in Undeposited Funds past Friday — that's how A/R aging drifts from the GL.

Run the 0/30/60/90 aging. Send first reminders at 7 days past due, second reminders at 21 days, and call the customer at 45 days. Anything in 90+ goes to the collections-decision step below for a write-off or escalation call.

For each balance over 90 days, choose one path: escalation call from the controller, payment plan with signed terms, or bad-debt write-off via credit memo. Document the decision and notify the partner before adjusting the GL — write-offs hit revenue and cannot be reversed without a journal entry.

Pull bills from Bill.com, Hubdoc, Dext, and the AP email inbox. Code each to the correct GL account, class, and customer/job where billable. Confirm a current W-9 is on file for any new vendor — missing W-9s are the #1 cause of January 1099 chaos.

For inventory and capex purchases, tie the vendor bill to the PO and the receiving document. Quantity and unit-price exceptions go back to ops for resolution; do not approve a bill that doesn't match without a documented variance memo.

Filter the AP aging for bills due in the next 10 days. Prioritize early-pay discount terms (2/10 net 30 is worth taking), then critical vendors, then the rest. Submit the payment batch to the partner for release in Bill.com — separation of bill entry and payment release is a basic anti-fraud control.

For top-spend vendors, tie the vendor statement to the open AP detail. Investigate any invoice on the statement that is not in the GL — duplicate billing, missed credit memos, and unauthorized charges surface here.

Bi-weekly schedules skip a week each month. Confirm against the pay calendar in Gusto, ADP, or Rippling before opening payroll prep — running an off-cycle batch by mistake creates duplicate withholdings that take weeks to unwind.

Confirm all hourly timesheets are submitted and approved by the manager. Reconcile PTO requests against the leave balance. Flag any employee with negative PTO or uncoded overtime for HR before the run is committed.

Submit the run in the payroll platform after a final review of gross-to-net. Confirm the federal deposit schedule (semiweekly vs. monthly per the lookback period) — late deposits trigger 2% / 5% / 10% penalties under IRS Pub 15.

Import the payroll journal from Gusto/ADP into QBO. Tie gross wages, employer taxes, and net pay to the bank debit. Accrue any wages earned but not yet paid if the period-end falls mid-pay-period.

Apply pay-rate changes, address updates, W-4 revisions, 401(k) deferral changes, and benefit elections in the HRIS and payroll platform. Garnishment orders take effect on the next available pay date — confirm the order copy is filed in the employee record.

Refresh the rolling 13-week forecast in Float, Dryrun, or the firm's spreadsheet template. Inputs: A/R aging (collections by week), A/P aging (commitments by week), payroll calendar, debt service, and recurring fixed costs. Highlight any week that drops below the minimum operating cash threshold.

Generate MTD and YTD P&L with budget and prior-year comparisons. Investigate any GL account with greater than 10% variance to budget — the explanation goes in the management commentary, not in a follow-up email.

Three to five bullets the owner should care about: cash position vs. last week, top revenue/expense variances, A/R concerns, upcoming large outflows. Avoid restating numbers the report already shows — the value is in the interpretation.

Post the report package and commentary to the client portal (Karbon, TaxDome, or Liscio). Lock the prior week in QBO with a close-date password so retroactive edits route through a journal entry instead of silently changing locked-period numbers.