Lines that wait for a closed month
.Where did the card sales land? A Saturday rush can post on Monday. The return uses the month the bank already matched, so we ask for the batch date rather than the memory of the weekend.
The return is a reading of closed months. Income is what those months collected. Costs are what those months paid. Anything still open is not a line yet.
Drafting the return begins only when the bank tie for those months is already in the file, because an earlier draft is the one we end up rebuilding. Starting earlier produces a draft that has to be rebuilt, and the rebuild is where numbers drift.
Payroll setup stays on the system you already use to pay people. The wages on the return should match what that provider already reported, not a second set of figures we invent at the end of the year.
Sales tax already filed from a checked address should agree with the months. If it does not, we fix the month before we touch the return.
What we will not invent
.We will not invent a refund, a balance due, or a story about a year we have not closed. Those sentences come after the months, not before them.
A draft of the return stays in the file with the last month the bank already matched written across the top. If that month is October, a November deposit stays in a side note until the bank, the card batch, and the payroll provider name the same month. We do not slide an untied deposit onto the draft because the calendar has reached December. The person who lived the year reads that draft and marks any line that does not match a month they can point to in the bank.
Before a wage line is copied onto the return, we sit it next to the provider's own report for that quarter and we mark any name the provider has and the books do not. A sales-tax payment already sent for a tied month is listed with the address that set the slices. Income is copied only from a month whose bank tie is already in the file, and a conversation about what the year felt like does not add a line.
You read the draft of the year and you say whether it matches the months you lived. Nothing is filed until that reading has happened.
A busy restaurant week
.We ask whether that week's sales were collected in the month the return will use.
A busy restaurant does not change the rule. The batch date does. If the sale was Saturday and the deposit was Monday, the month follows the deposit.
The same rule covers a quiet shop and a loud one. Volume is not a reason to skip the tie.
The dates page is where the timing for the property list and the timing for the franchise report sit beside the return. Open the dates page.
