What is year-end preparation?
The file your accountant needs, finished, so their work starts where it should.
A finished year-end file is not the same thing as a set of closed monthly books. Twelve clean monthly closes get a business most of the way there, but year-end preparation is a distinct pass at the calendar or fiscal year boundary: everything gets tied back to a single closing trial balance, every balance sheet account gets a schedule that explains it, and the questions a CPA would normally have to ask while building the return get answered before the file lands on their desk. The difference shows up in the CPA's engagement letter — a firm quoting an annual return build is quoting against an assumption about how much reconstruction their staff will have to do, and a file that arrives incomplete or unreconciled means that estimate goes up, invoice included.
What actually goes into the file is schedules, not just numbers. A trial balance total for fixed assets is not useful to a CPA on its own; a fixed asset roll-forward showing every addition, disposal, and the depreciation method applied to each is. A loan payable balance is not useful alone; a schedule showing principal and interest, the year-end balance, and next year's payment schedule is. The same logic runs through accounts receivable and payable aging, prepaid and accrued balances, and any related-party or shareholder loan activity during the year — every material balance sheet line gets a schedule that stands on its own, so the CPA is verifying a figure instead of reconstructing one from raw transactions.
Why it matters
| Without a system | With CapEasy |
|---|---|
| Performance problems surface a quarter late | A pack that lands on the same day each month |
| Board and investor reporting becomes a scramble before each meeting | Variance against budget, explained in a written note |
| Cash runway is an estimate rather than a number | Board-ready reporting produced from the close you were already doing |
What we need from you
From the close
- Reconciled general ledger
- Trial balance
- AR and AP aging
- Inventory reports if applicable
For comparison
- Budget and forecast data
- Prior period statements
- Segment or entity structure
How it runs, step by step
- Monthly
- Profit & loss
- Balance sheet
- Cash flow statement
- Quarterly
- Consolidated statements
- Quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year comparison
- Cash flow trend analysis
- Year-end
- Year-end statement preparation
- Supporting schedules
- Fixed asset reconciliation
- Management reporting
- Break-even analysis
- Profitability by product or service
- Working capital analysis
Who does what
| Your CapEasy team | Year-end preparation, the reconciliations and reporting behind it, and the questions list that keeps it honest. |
| Your CPA or enrolled agent | Everything that carries a licence in United States — rendered exactly as written: issue compilation, review or audit reports — those are restricted to licensed cpa firms. |
| You | One conversation with one named person, and the decisions that are genuinely yours. |
Year-end preparation in United States
UAA s.14(a) — a prepared file is not an attest report
The Uniform Accountancy Act s.14(a) restricts compilation, review, and audit reports — and the opinions attached to them — to a licensed CPA firm. Year-end preparation is the work of assembling and reconciling the file the CPA builds a return or, separately, a report from; it is never itself a compiled, reviewed, or audited financial statement, and nothing in the deliverable is worded to suggest otherwise.
Form 1120, 1120-S, and 1065 each pull from different parts of the same closing file
A C-corp 1120 needs Schedule L (balance sheet) and Schedule M-1 or M-2 reconciling book income to taxable income; an S-corp 1120-S and a partnership 1065 need those plus shareholder or partner basis tracking and K-1 allocations. The closing trial balance and its supporting schedules are the same underlying file — what differs is which schedules the entity type pulls hardest on, which is a call the CPA makes, not something the preparation work presumes.
Form 1099-NEC deadline sits inside year-end, not after it
Form 1099-NEC for non-employee compensation of $600 or more is due to recipients and the IRS by January 31 — earlier than the return itself. A year-end file that does not flag which vendors crossed that threshold, and whether a W-9 is on record for each, turns January into a scramble that has nothing to do with the return build. We surface the vendor-payment summary as part of the file, not as a separate fire drill.
Fixed asset roll-forward feeds Form 4562, but the election is the CPA's call
Section 179 expensing and bonus depreciation elections are made on the return, not in the bookkeeping file — but the CPA can only make an informed election with a complete roll-forward showing every addition's cost, in-service date, and asset class. A missing or incomplete fixed asset schedule does not stop the return from being filed; it means the CPA is estimating, which is a worse position for everyone than a schedule that states the facts.
What your CPA or enrolled agent receives from us
- A closing trial balance for the full fiscal or calendar year, with every account tied to a supporting schedule, not just a bank reconciliation.
- A fixed asset roll-forward: opening balance, every addition and disposal with cost and in-service date, depreciation applied, and closing balance by asset class.
- Accounts receivable and accounts payable aging as of year-end, with anything past 90 days flagged.
- A loan and debt schedule showing principal, interest, year-end balance, and the payment schedule for the next twelve months, for every note payable and receivable.
- An owner draws, distributions, and contributions schedule for the year, classified separately from officer compensation.
- A related-party transaction log — loans to or from officers, leases or contracts with entities the owner also controls — flagged for the CPA's review, not characterized by us.
