Year-end and tax preparation checklist
Year-end is the one time the whole year’s bookkeeping gets scrutinized — by you, your accountant, your owners, and the IRS. The work is far easier when your books have been kept clean all year, and far more painful when they haven’t. This article walks through a practical year-end routine in TenantLedger: closing out the books through December 31, pulling the reports your accountant needs, gathering 1099 information, cleaning up categorization, and archiving everything so you can answer questions months later.
None of this requires a special “year-end close” button. Year-end in TenantLedger is the same monthly discipline you already use — reconciling, reviewing, and reporting — applied to the full calendar year and finished with a clean export and archive.
Start clean: close out the books through December 31
Reports are only as accurate as the data behind them. Before you run a single year-end report, make sure the year is actually complete.
Recommendation: Finish all routine data entry for the year before you start tax prep.
Why it matters: A Cash Flow report or 1099 total that’s missing December’s bills or the last week of rent payments will quietly understate your numbers — and you may not notice until your accountant does.
What to do in TenantLedger:
- Verify all rent and recurring charges posted for December.
- Enter every vendor bill dated in the tax year, even ones you paid in January — and pay/record the ones that were paid before year-end.
- Record any miscellaneous income (application fees, laundry, parking) that hasn’t been entered yet.
- Create deposit batches so your recorded deposits match what actually hit the bank. See Create a deposit batch.
Tip: The Cash Flow report counts money that actually moved — payments received and bills paid — not amounts still owed. If a December rent payment isn’t entered, it won’t appear in the year’s income.
Reconcile every bank account through year-end
Recommendation: Reconcile each active bank account through your December (or year-end) statement before running any financial reports.
Why it matters: Reconciliation is what proves your books match reality. An unreconciled account can hide a duplicated payment, a missed bill, or a transposed amount — exactly the kind of error that’s painful to untangle on a tax return. Reconciling monthly all year makes the December reconciliation a quick confirmation rather than a year’s worth of detective work.
What to do in TenantLedger:
- Reconcile each operating account and your security-deposit account through the year-end statement. See Reconcile a bank account.
- Confirm the Difference lands at 0.00 for each account.
- Investigate any uncleared (outstanding) items — outstanding checks or deposits in transit are normal; stale ones from months ago usually signal a data-entry problem.
If you find a mistake in an already-saved reconciliation, you don’t delete and redo from scratch — open Edit Reconcile, uncheck the affected item, and save. (There is no button named “Unreconcile.”) See Undo or delete a reconciliation.
Run the full-year Cash Flow report
The Cash Flow report is the centerpiece of your accountant package — the property-management equivalent of a profit-and-loss statement.
Recommendation: Run the Cash Flow report for January 1–December 31, both per property and for All properties.
Why it matters: This single report summarizes the year’s income and expenses by category, which is the form your accountant works from. Running it per property gives you owner-level detail; running it for All gives you the portfolio total.
What to do in TenantLedger:
- Go to Reports → Cash Flow Report.
- Set the date range to your full tax year (January 1 to December 31).
- Run it once with All properties for the portfolio total, then once per property for owner-level reporting.
Because income and expenses are grouped by chart-of-account category, this report is only as clean as your categorization. That’s why the next two steps matter.
Gather vendor information for 1099s
If you paid an unincorporated contractor $600 or more during the year (check current IRS thresholds, which can change), you generally owe them a 1099. TenantLedger helps you assemble the two pieces you need: who you paid, and how much.
Recommendation: Pull vendor contact details from the Vendor Report, and the dollar amounts paid from the Bill Report.
Why it matters: A 1099 needs the vendor’s legal name and mailing address plus the total you actually paid them during the year. The Vendor Report gives you the address book; the Bill Report gives you the paid totals.
What to do in TenantLedger:
- Run the Vendor Report (Reports → Payables & Vendors) for the names and mailing addresses. See Run the Vendor Summary (for 1099s).
- For the dollar figure a 1099 reports, run the Bill Report, filtered to the vendor and the tax-year date range — this totals what you paid, not what’s still outstanding.
- Confirm each 1099 vendor’s mailing address is current in their record before you rely on it.
Tip: Keeping vendor addresses up to date all year — the moment a vendor’s address changes — means there’s nothing to chase in January. Collect each contractor’s W-9 when you first hire them, not at tax time.
Review the Chart of Accounts for miscategorized items
Recommendation: Scan your full-year Cash Flow report for categories that look wrong, then fix the underlying transactions.
Why it matters: Miscategorized transactions distort every report that groups by category — and at tax time a misfiled expense can land in the wrong line of a return. The Cash Flow report makes outliers easy to spot: an “Uncategorized” bucket with real money in it, a repairs figure that’s implausibly high or low, or income sitting in the wrong account.
What to look for:
- A category total that’s far higher or lower than you’d expect.
- An “Uncategorized” or catch-all category with meaningful dollars in it — re-file those into specific accounts.
- Expenses booked as income, or vice versa.
- Capital improvements lumped in with routine repairs (your accountant may treat these very differently).
What to do: Open the affected transaction (bill, charge, or miscellaneous transaction) and reassign it to the correct chart account, then re-run the Cash Flow report to confirm the category now reads correctly.
A note on security deposits: deposits you hold are liabilities, not income. They should never appear in your income categories. If a deposit shows up as income, that’s a categorization error to correct before year-end — it inflates your taxable income picture. Deposits belong on the Balance Sheet, not the Cash Flow report.
Export to QuickBooks (if connected)
If you’ve connected QuickBooks to your account, year-end is a natural checkpoint to make sure everything has been sent across.
Recommendation: Export any records still flagged Needs to be Exported or Needs to be Updated for the tax year.
Why it matters: Your accountant may work in QuickBooks. Sending a complete, current set of records means they’re working from the same numbers your TenantLedger reports show.
What to do in TenantLedger:
- Confirm your data is linked in the link wizard (accounts, customers, vendors, banks, items) — unlinked records can’t export.
- Open the manual export screen, filter by the tax-year date range, and review records by Status.
- Send anything marked Needs to be Exported (never sent) and Needs to be Updated (sent, then edited in TenantLedger).
See Export your data to QuickBooks.
QuickBooks export is optional and only available if you’ve connected it. It’s manual and one-directional — TenantLedger pushes to QuickBooks and never changes your TenantLedger records. If you don’t use QuickBooks, your accountant can work directly from the printed/PDF reports instead.
Prepare owner statements
Owners want a year-end picture of how their property performed. TenantLedger doesn’t have an in-app “owner payout” or distribution feature, so think of an owner statement as a small package of per-property reports you compile and share.
Recommendation: For each owner, the core statement is the year’s Cash Flow report scoped to their property. The Balance Sheet is a company-wide report (it can’t be filtered to a single owner or property), so include it only as a supplemental, whole-company overview. Share these through the Owner Portal or as PDFs.
Why it matters: A clear year-end statement answers the owner’s core questions — what came in, what went out, and what’s held on their behalf — and heads off the “how did my property do?” phone calls.
What to do in TenantLedger:
- Run the Cash Flow report scoped to each owner’s property for the full year — that’s their income-and-expense summary, and the one report you can target to a single property.
- The Balance Sheet is company-wide — it shows total assets, liabilities (including all held security deposits), and equity across your whole portfolio, not one property. Include it for overall context, and make clear to owners that it covers the entire company. See Run the Balance Sheet.
- If the owner has Owner Portal access, they can view their property’s financial summary on demand; the year-end reports complement that with a formal, point-in-time record.
- To distribute profit to an owner, you handle the payment yourself — write the check or record the payment outside of any “distribution” screen — then keep your supporting Cash Flow report with it. Document your calculation method (for example, net income after reserving for upcoming expenses) in writing so it’s consistent and defensible year to year.
If you record owner contributions (capital an owner puts in), make sure those are entered for the year before you finalize statements. See Record an owner contribution. There is no matching distribution screen — distributions are a manual payment you record and document.
Archive the year’s reports
Recommendation: Save a dated PDF copy of every key year-end report and store it outside the app.
Why it matters: Reports reflect your data as it stands today. If you correct or add transactions later, last year’s report will recalculate. Saving a PDF at close time captures the figures you actually filed taxes on — invaluable if you’re ever audited or an owner questions a number months later.
What to archive (save as PDF):
- Full-year Cash Flow report (All properties, and per property).
- Year-end Balance Sheet.
- Vendor Report and the Bill Report totals used for 1099s.
- Each year-end bank reconciliation summary.
- Any owner statements you sent.
How to save: With the report on screen, use your browser’s print command (Ctrl+P / Cmd+P) and choose Save as PDF. Name files clearly — for example, 2026 Cash Flow - Riverside Apartments.pdf — and keep them in a dated folder with your tax records.
Year-end routine at a glance
| Step | Action | Where in TenantLedger |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Finish all data entry for the year | Charges, Bills, Miscellaneous income |
| 2 | Create year-end deposit batches | Banking → Deposits |
| 3 | Reconcile every account through year-end | Banking → Reconcile |
| 4 | Run full-year Cash Flow (All + per property) | Reports → Cash Flow Report |
| 5 | Pull vendor names/addresses for 1099s | Reports → Vendor Report |
| 6 | Total amounts paid per 1099 vendor | Reports → Bill Report |
| 7 | Review categories; fix miscategorized items | Cash Flow report → edit transactions |
| 8 | Export to QuickBooks (if connected) | Settings → QuickBooks → Manual export |
| 9 | Compile owner statements | Cash Flow + Balance Sheet per property |
| 10 | Save dated PDFs of all reports | Browser print → Save as PDF |
Common mistakes to avoid
- Don’t wait until tax season to reconcile. Reconciling 12 months at once is exponentially harder than the monthly habit. If you’ve fallen behind, reconcile month by month in order — don’t skip ahead.
- Do enter every bill dated in the tax year, including ones you won’t pay until January, so the year’s expenses are complete and your 1099 totals are right.
- Don’t treat security deposits as income. They’re liabilities you hold in trust. If one is sitting in an income category, fix it before you finalize reports.
- Do reassign miscategorized transactions rather than ignoring an “Uncategorized” bucket — a catch-all category with real dollars in it makes the whole Cash Flow report less useful at tax time.
- Don’t collect W-9s in January. Get each contractor’s W-9 when you first hire them, so vendor names and addresses are ready when 1099 season arrives.
- Don’t assume QuickBooks export ran on its own. Export is manual; before close, check the Needs to be Exported and Needs to be Updated lists and send anything outstanding. (And only if you’ve connected QuickBooks at all.)
- Do save dated PDFs. Live reports recalculate when you edit data later; an archived PDF preserves the numbers you actually filed on.
- Don’t go looking for an “owner distribution” button. Distributing profit is a payment you make and record manually — keep the supporting Cash Flow report with it.
Related how-to guides
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