With tax season in full swing, our Support team has put together our top 5 tips for helping your year-end process run smoothly. Have a look, and be sure to check out our Preparing for Year-End training webinar for even more tips!
Update your brokerWOLF program
It’s important to make sure that you have the latest version of brokerWOLF, and to check for updates before you generate your tax slips. This way, you can avoid missing any potential late changes that may affect your tax slips.
You can check the changes made in each update in the release notes, which we post under the Help drop-down menu in brokerWOLF.
If your brokerWOLF information is hosted on our servers, your program will be automatically updated as new releases become available.
Update your control dates
You can use control dates to ensure that your accounting posting entries stay within a predetermined date range, and that they can’t be accidentally posted or reversed into a prior period. These dates are set on the Misc1 screen of the company profile (E.1.1), where you can choose your control start and end dates.
It’s important to note that updating your control dates won’t close your year-end; it just ensures that your financials for the prior year won’t be affected when you start working in the new year.
If you see a warning that your control start date is more than one year in the past, head to your company profile and edit your control dates to keep entries in the right year.
Check out our Accountant Year-End Reports Tip Sheet
This tip sheet has a list of reports that you can review and prepare for your accountant to help you with your fiscal year-end.
Need help preparing for your year-end? Our WOLFwatch team is ready to help! They offer billable services like book preparations, bank reconciliations, or closing out your year-end with your accountant’s adjusting entries.
Make sure you have all the information for your tax slips
Before you start preparing your tax slips for staff and/or agents, we’ve got some handy resources for you to check out. In your brokerWOLF Help menu, you can find information on staff (9.5.3) and agents (9.5.4). You’ll also find the Tax Slip Preparation FAQ, which has answers to the most common questions about tax slips.
And when you’re preparing 1099s and T4As, you’ll find the information you need in our video tutorials in The Community.
Make any unique payroll updates for your company or staff
For example, here are two of the most common changes we see:
U.S. payroll: Verify the state unemployment tax (employer) has the correct percentage in the auxiliary field (9.5.1), and that it’s entered correctly. For example, 5.4% should be entered as 0.054. This percentage is unique to each company, and is assigned by your state.
Canadian payroll: When processing your first staff payroll, if any TD1 basic tax rates have changed, you’ll be prompted to update any staff members with the base tax credit amounts. Employees with overridden tax credit amounts will need to complete new TD1 forms (available on the CRA website) to determine their tax rates. You can manually enter TD1 and provincial tax credit amounts on the Payroll screen in your staff profiles (I.1.1).
If you have any questions about any of these tips or how they might affect your company, please reach out to our Support team by phone, email, or through the Live Chat on our Support page. You can also reach us through the Support Request Form in the Help drop-down menu in your brokerWOLF, which will let you attach any additional information about your question that can help us get you a detailed response.
Happy Year-End!
