Bookkeeping Mistakes Small Businesses Should Avoid

Bad bookkeeping doesn't announce itself. It shows up later as a surprise tax bill, a rejected loan application, or a business decision made on numbers that were never real. The good news: most bookkeeping problems come from a handful of avoidable habits.

The six mistakes I see most often

• Mixing personal and business transactions in one bank account
• Recording sales when cash arrives instead of when invoices are raised, or vice versa, inconsistently
• Never reconciling bank statements, so errors accumulate silently
• Ignoring withholding tax deducted by customers, losing legitimate tax credit
• No documentation for cash expenses, which becomes disallowed expenditure in audit
• Waiting until year-end to 'fix the books' instead of monthly closing