The end of the year is approaching fast, which means it’s time for your start-up or small business to run through an end-of-year checklist. This will help to boost your efficiency and overall decision-making as you head into 2024, which is set to be an exciting year for businesses as the economy starts to bounce back.
To help you, this guide has put together a small business end-of-year checklist. Read carefully, as you won’t want to miss a detail.
1. Review Your Cybersecurity
These days, cyberattacks are more common than ever—and in 2023, businesses have been the main victims. If a cybercriminal or cybercrime group were to target your business next, this could lead to all sorts of problems for you if your cybersecurity isn’t up to scratch, including financial losses and reputational damage. Therefore, it’s important that you review your cybersecurity now that the end of the year is approaching.
Don’t have strong cybersecurity measures in place? There’s no need to panic. To help you prepare your cybersecurity for the coming year, it’s recommended you get a cybersecurity consultation from Bytes. Through a cybersecurity consultation, they will be able to identify where and how you need to improve your cybersecurity moving into the future, such as by using better threat detection technology.
2. Update Your Payroll
Over the past year, you might have hired (and also released) lots of employees. If this is the case, then you should make sure your payroll is up to date. This will enable you to:
Continue paying your employees accurately.
Stay compliant with tax laws and employment legalizations.
Remember to double-check your payroll several times so that any potential mistakes can be spotted, whether you have a team of 10 or 50 employees.
3. Review the Goals You Set at the Start of the Year
At the beginning of 2023, your business likely set a variety of different goals to achieve, from increasing profits to increasing website traffic. Now that the year is approaching its end, you should do a detailed overview of the goals you set and whether or not they’ve been achieved. For the goals that haven’t been achieved, try to figure out why this is the case with the rest of your management team. Then, decide whether or not you want to set (or alter) these goals for 2024 with a fresh approach.
4. Complete Your Taxes
Next, you need to complete your business taxes if they haven’t been done already.
For the small businesses out there that haven’t filed a tax return yet, you can always hire a business accountant. They will be able to give you the best possible advice in regard to mitigating your tax liabilities and claiming all the possible allowances that you can. As a result, you’ll then save money.
5. Audit Your Inventory
Finally, make sure to audit your inventory so that you understand how much stock you have left. You can improve your inventory audits by using inventory management software (e.g., Fishbowl). By doing this, you can make the process of tracking your inventory much simpler while reducing errors at the same time.