EOFY Checklist for Small Business

How to use this checklist

End of financial year isn't one task; it's three overlapping streams — payroll, books, and tax planning — each with its own deadline pressure. The businesses that have a calm July are the ones that start in May. Work through the streams below in order, and assign each item to a named person with a date.

Before 30 June: planning and clean-up

• Reconcile all bank, credit card and loan accounts. Unreconciled transactions are the single biggest cause of EOFY delays — clear them before the year closes, not after.
• Chase aged receivables and review bad debts. A debt generally needs to be genuinely written off before year end to be deductible in that year — talk to your accountant about which ones qualify.
• Review asset purchases with your accountant. Depreciation and instant asset write-off rules change; the ATO publishes the current thresholds, and timing a purchase either side of 30 June can matter.
• Complete a stocktake if you carry inventory. Count it, value it consistently, and write off obsolete stock while it still counts.
• Check superannuation payments will clear before year end if you want the deduction this year — super is generally deductible when received by the fund, not when you send it, so allow processing time.
• Review your payroll for the year: classifications, allowances, and any award changes that took effect mid-year. Fixing errors before finalisation is far easier than amending afterwards.

Just after 30 June: finalisation

• Finalise Single Touch Payroll for every employee. The STP finalisation declaration is what tells the ATO your employees' income statements are ready — the ATO sets the due date, so check it and diarise it.
• Reconcile total wages, PAYG withholding and super between your payroll system, your general ledger and what you've reported. Discrepancies found now are corrections; found later, they're amendments.
• Lodge your final BAS for the year by the ATO's current due date, and reconcile the year's GST while you're in there.
• Prepare for your taxable payments annual report (TPAR) if you're in a covered industry such as building, cleaning, courier or IT services — the ATO lists who must lodge and when.
• Gather substantiation: logbooks, receipts for significant purchases, loan statements, insurance schedules, and dividend or distribution records. A tidy folder now saves accountant hours (and fees) later.

The strategic pass most owners skip

• Compare this year's numbers to last year's — margin, wage-to-revenue ratio, aged debtors. EOFY is the one time all the data is in one place.
• Review your structure with your adviser. Sole trader, company, trust — the right answer changes as the business grows.
• Reset budgets and pricing for the new year while the full-year picture is fresh, rather than in a rush next June.
• Write down what made this EOFY painful and fix the process, not just the symptom. If everything above depends on one person, that's a capability gap worth naming — see the back-office capability gap.

A note on dates and figures

Deliberately, this checklist names obligations rather than dates or dollar thresholds — the ATO's due dates and limits move, and lodging through a tax or BAS agent often changes them. Confirm the current dates on the ATO website or with your agent, and treat this page as general information rather than advice for your situation. If the whole finance rhythm feels heavier than it should, our finance services exist for exactly that.