Monthly bookkeeping checklist, PDF and Excel: what has to be true before the month is closed.
Nineteen weekly, monthly, GST-period, quarterly and annual tasks with the Inland Revenue dates built in, a signed month-close line, and an Excel tracker that holds twelve months on one sheet with red-until-cleared cells. Free, no email required.
What does a bookkeeper do each month?
Weekly: reconcile bank feeds, raise and send sales invoices, enter supplier bills with the taxable supply information attached, chase overdue debtors from the ageing report, run payroll and file it with Inland Revenue within two working days of payday. Monthly: reconcile every bank, card and loan account to zero difference, count petty cash, review the receivables and payables ageing, pay PAYE and KiwiSaver by the 20th, record assets (under $1,000 is expensed), post prepayments and accruals, reconcile owner and intercompany accounts, review the profit and loss and balance sheet for anything that looks wrong, roll the cash flow forecast forward, and send the management report on the agreed date. Then the GST return by the 28th of the month after the period (7 May and 15 January exceptions), FBT quarterly if registered, and provisional tax reminders. Across 6,190 positive publicly posted reviews of NZ accounting and bookkeeping practices, accuracy is praised in only 9% and deadline reliability in 3%: clients assume both. The checklist is where the assumption is kept true.
The job this document is doing.
- —The month is ‘closed’ with three bank transactions still unmatched
- —A supplier bill is entered without the GST number, and the claim is disallowed later
- —Payday filing is remembered on the third working day
- —Nobody signs the close, so nobody can say who checked
Open it and use it today.
- 01Printable checklist: 19 tasks by frequency with done and date columns, month-closed and signed line, issues carried forward
- 02Excel tracker: twelve months across, Done / N/A / Open per task, red until cleared, tasks-done count, close date and closed-by per month
- 03Inland Revenue dates for a 31 March balance date on the page, dated
Free to use and adapt for your own business. Not legal advice: check contract terms against your own terms of trade and, where it matters, with a lawyer.
The law behind it. Inland Revenue due dates (GST, PAYE, payday filing, FBT, provisional tax) for a 31 March balance date; Goods and Services Tax Act 1985 (taxable supply information); Income Tax Act 2007 (low-value asset threshold $1,000). Checked on ird.govt.nz on 9 October 2026.
Why this document, and not another one.
| Measure (NZ accounting and bookkeeping) | Figure |
|---|---|
| Accuracy praised, positive reviews | 8.9% |
| Deadline reliability praised, positive reviews | 3.1% |
| Accessibility (easy to reach) praised, positive reviews | 42.5% |
| Errors or mistakes mentioned, negative reviews | Under 1% |
From 7,571 publicly posted customer reviews of 484 NZ accounting and bookkeeping practices, collected October 2026. Each review carries a single star rating: 4 or 5 stars counted as positive (n=6,190), 2 stars or fewer as negative (n=328, reported as rank order rather than precision, so negative-review figures are rounded). Praise and complaint traits were coded against a fixed taxonomy; no business is named. Full corpus, method and thresholds: the accounting & bookkeeping methodology page. Full findings: the accounting & bookkeeping research study.
Use it alongside
Monthly bank reconciliation template (Excel)
A three-sheet workbook: the reconciliation itself, an outstanding-items list that feeds it, and a 12-month sign-off checklist.
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