What documents does my bookkeeper or accountant need from me?

Why does the handover feel endless, and how do you split it?

"Everything you might need" has no end point, so it never feels finished. Split it by when each record is needed, because the three sets behave differently:

• Setup set. You send it once, at the start. The professional builds your accounts and opening balances from it, so no period can be finished until it arrives.
• Recurring set. You send it every period on a schedule you agree. This is the part to turn into a habit.
• On-request set. You send it when the professional asks about a particular transaction, such as the contract behind a large payment.

Your first handover is mostly the setup set and is the heaviest you will face; a steady-state period is the recurring set plus a few requests. Requests arise because one document may not be enough: the IRS page "What kind of records should I keep" notes that a combination of supporting documents may be needed to substantiate all elements of an expense.

Sending everything you hold "to be safe" backfires: bulk hides what is missing and moves the sorting onto the professional's time.

What goes in the one-time setup set?

Send each of these once, and name any you don't have:

The IRS's Business structures page says your form of business determines which income tax return form you have to file. IRS Publication 583 says copies of filed returns help in preparing future returns. The IRS page "What kind of records should I keep" says you need asset records to compute annual depreciation and the gain or loss when you sell.

Tell the professional which accounting method your books and returns have used. IRS Publication 538 says that under the cash method you include income actually or constructively received during the tax year and generally deduct expenses in the year you actually pay them, while under an accrual method you generally report income in the year it is earned and deduct or capitalize expenses in the year incurred. Send the lists of customer invoices and supplier bills unpaid at the start date; how they enter the opening position depends on that method, and the professional decides it.

What changes if you are switching professionals mid-year?

The setup set then includes what the previous professional holds: the books through the last period they closed, with their adjusting entries and reconciliations, the depreciation schedule, and copies of the returns they filed; for payroll returns, the IRS's Employment tax recordkeeping page lists copies of returns filed and their confirmation numbers among employment tax records. Request everything in writing as soon as you decide to switch; a previous professional who won't release records is a separate problem from this handover.

What do you send every period?

Agree a period with the professional, such as a month, and send each period's set on that schedule. Lining it up with your main bank account's statement date lets that statement close the period; cards and loans may close on other dates. The IRS page "What kind of records should I keep" says supporting documents include sales slips, paid bills, invoices, receipts, deposit slips and canceled checks.

Some records belong in every period's set:

• A statement for every bank, card, loan and payment-processor account, covering the whole period
• Sales records: invoices issued, deposit records, and point-of-sale or processor reports
• Receipts and bills for what the business bought
• Notes on anything unusual, as described below

Others exist only when the activity happened, so their absence may be correct or may be a gap:

• Payroll records for each pay run
• Documents for a new loan, lease, asset purchase or sale, or newly opened account
• Records of money you put in or took out, and of business costs paid from a personal account or card
• Letters or notices from tax agencies

A bank statement shows that you paid, not what you bought. IRS Publication 583 says proof of payment of an amount, by itself, does not establish you are entitled to a tax deduction, and that you should also keep documents such as credit card sales slips and invoices to show you incurred the cost.

How does the engagement's scope change the list?

The list follows what you have engaged the professional to do, so someone else's list can differ from yours for good reason:

The IRS's Employment tax recordkeeping page lists, among payroll records, employees' names, addresses, social security numbers and occupations, and dates of employment for each employee.

Payroll and tax filings carry due dates set by tax agencies, not by your engagement; the IRS's Employment tax due dates page, for example, says an employer must file the required forms by the required due date. So send payroll changes, such as a hire, a leaver or a pay rise, before the pay run they affect rather than with the period's batch, and send each filing's records by the date you agree with the professional for that filing. Assembling a filing-season package is a separate question.

What can the professional pull directly, and what must you still send?

Anything a system already holds, and that you have given the professional access to, needn't be exported and sent. What a system holds depends on the product and your settings; QuickBooks Online is one example:

• Bank and card transactions. Intuit's help page "Connect bank account & credit cards in QuickBooks" says you choose how far back QuickBooks goes when it downloads transactions from a connected account, and that the default is the beginning of the year. With access to that company file, the professional already has the transactions downloaded from the date you chose onward, so don't export those; for earlier dates the statements in your set are their record. Statements still go in your period set, and so does everything for an account you didn't connect.
• Receipts. Intuit's "Upload your receipts to QuickBooks" page describes uploading receipts to QuickBooks Online, where each can be matched to an existing transaction. The feed brings in the payment line, not the receipt: one you upload there needn't also be emailed, but one left in a drawer is still yours to send.

Records that never enter a connected system are always yours to send: paper receipts, cash sales, contracts, costs paid from personal accounts, and every explanation. Whether to give access, to which systems and at what level, is a separate decision that stays with you.

What information can only you give?

Documents show amounts and payees; only you know why. Send these with each period:

• Business purpose of ambiguous items. A hardware-store receipt, a transfer to a person or a restaurant bill doesn't say what it was for. The IRS page "What kind of records should I keep" says expense documents should identify the payee, amount paid, proof of payment and date incurred, and include a description showing the amount was for a business expense.
• Decisions taken in the period. Say if you took on a loan, bought or sold equipment, hired someone, changed prices, moved money between yourself and the business, or started a new line of work.
• Answers to open queries. Reply to each question by the agreed date, even when the answer is that you don't know.

Left unexplained, an item gets a plausible category; the entry then looks deliberate, so nobody revisits it. A one-line note per item, giving date, amount, payee and purpose, is enough to explain it; it goes with the receipt, not instead of it.

How do you check a period is complete before sending it?

Check against accounts and activity, not the number of files. The IRS page "What kind of records should I keep" notes that for most small businesses the business checking account is the main source for entries in the books, so start with accounts:

1. Start from the account list in your setup set, then read each statement for payments or transfers to a card, loan, processor or other account, and add any account that isn't on the list.
2. For each account, confirm the statements cover every day of the period: each statement's opening balance equals the previous closing balance, and the last one reaches the period end. Where an account's statement closes before the period end, mark it pending and send the next statement when it arrives; for a cash box, send the count at the period end.
3. Go down the activity-only list and, for each thing that happened, confirm its documents are in the set.
4. Read each statement for lines you would need to explain, and add a note for each.
5. Write down anything missing, and whether it doesn't exist or can't be found.

An account missing from your list shows up when you read the statements in step 1; a listed account without full statements fails step 2; a missing activity class fails step 3. On a first handover, run the same check on the setup set: every account open at the start date has a statement covering that date, and every agreement you know of is included or declared missing.

What does a reusable owner checklist look like?

Keep one two-part checklist and re-run the second part every period; the last column turns silence into information. Part A covers the setup set, filled in here for an example business:

Part B covers the recurring set, for each period. When a row marked "Only if it happened" had no activity, write "none this period" in its last column.

How should sensitive records travel?

The most sensitive items are payroll records carrying employees' social security numbers, bank and card account details, tax returns and identity documents. The Federal Trade Commission's guide "Protecting Personal Information: A Guide for Business" says unencrypted email is not a secure way to transmit information, and tells businesses to encrypt sensitive information they send to third parties over public networks. Of the four practices below, the first two apply that guidance, and the last two guard against a request that only looks as if it came from your professional:

• Agree an encrypted upload route, such as a client portal, directly with the professional when the engagement starts, and use it for everything sensitive.
• Don't send these records as ordinary email attachments, and never send passwords or login details.
• Open the portal from a bookmark or app you set up at the start, never from a link in an email or message.
• If anyone, by email, text or phone call, asks you to send records to a new link, portal or address, send nothing until you have confirmed the request with the professional in person, or by calling a number you had before the request arrived and did not get from any email, message or call. A reply to the message, a number or link it contains, or the caller's own number doesn't count, because whoever made a false request controls those.

What if a requested record doesn't exist?

Say so in writing for each record, and say which case applies:

• It never existed. There is no lease because you work from home, or no payroll because you have no employees, so the professional can close the item.
• It exists but you can't find it. Say what you tried and get a replacement. The IRS's guidance on reconstructing records after a disaster or casualty loss points to the card company or bank for past statements and to suppliers for copies of invoices. The IRS's Get a business tax transcript page says a tax return transcript shows most line items from the original return as filed, but it doesn't show documents or statements attached to the return, so tell the professional which attachments are still missing. For a lost EIN notice, the IRS's Employer identification number page lists calling its business and specialty tax line to request Letter 147C.
• It can't be replaced. Tell the professional the date, payee, amount and purpose, point to the payment on the statement, and let them decide how to treat it. Never create a document made to look like the original.

A declared gap can be worked around; a silent one looks like an oversight and stalls the period.