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accountants and bookkeepers

Streamline your BAS process with Books review: A step by step guide

What is Books review?

Books review is a tool within QuickBooks Online that’s designed to support accountants and bookkeeping streamline the BAS preparation and lodgement process. You can set up Books review to reflect your own processes, you can easily see where someone is up to in the BAS process, you can ask your clients queries and anomaly transactions are surfaced automatically for you. Let’s see how it works. 

To access Books review, head into QuickBooks Online and select Books review from the left hand menu. From there, you’ll see four distinct steps to help you prepare and lodge a BAS - Transaction review, Bank Reconciliation, Final Review and Wrap Up. 

Transaction review

1. Select the required month or quarter you’re working on. 

2. Check all bank transactions for the period have been categorised. Select the Review now link to review any outstanding transactions. Mark it as Done once completed.


Transaction reviews in QuickBooks Books Review tool

3. Next, review any anomaly transactions QuickBooks Online has automatically surfaced for you. These can include: 

  1. Uncategorised transactions
  2. Transactions without payees
  3. Transactions without GST
  4. Duplicate transactions 
  5. Undeposited funds
  6. Unapplied payments

Tip! Use the Ask Client feature to send a query to your client about any transactions. And mark each table as Done once reviewed so you and your team know where you’re up to.

Use the Ask Client feature to send a query to your client about any transactions in QuickBooks Books Review tool
quote image
The Books review feature I love the most is the ability to mark individual transactions and ask the client for more information
Alee Cochrane, Bookkeeper and Virtual CFO, Total Bookkeeping and Business Solutions

4. Next, tailor the Shortcuts at the bottom of the screen to create your very own unique checklist of end of month/quarter/year reports and tasks. Add URL links to the shortcuts where you can to speed up access.

Tailor the Shortcuts at the bottom of the screen to create your very own unique checklist in Books Review
Take the stress out of managing your firm

Account reconciliation 

1. Select the accounts you want to reconcile for this client e.g. bank accounts, credit cards, payroll accounts etc, by clicking on Select accounts

2. Next, click on the date or Never reconciled link to complete the reconciliation for each account to be reconciled.

3. Review the transactions outlined in the Outstanding Transactions section for anything that needs your attention.

4. Next, tailor the Shortcuts at the bottom of the screen to create your very own unique checklist for this section.


Select the accounts you want to reconcile for your clients

Final Review

The Final Review stage in Books Review provides an overview of Accounts payable and Accounts receivable transactions that are 90 days or older and may need some action taken. 

1. Review the Accounts payable and Accounts receivable sections and action accordingly.

The Final Review stage in Books Review provides an overview of Accounts payable and Accounts receivable transactions that are 90 days or older and may need some action taken

Wrap Up

In this section you can prepare the BAS workpapers, prepare and lodge the BAS and close the books so no further entries are made to the period you’ve just finalised.


1. To prepare the BAS workpapers, in the Prepare reports card, click on Select then BAS Workpapers

2. Click on the Reports image on the left menu

3. Review the reports in the BAS Workpapers pack and add, edit, rearrange to suit your reporting needs.

4. Save and name your BAS workpaper pack.

Prepare the BAS workpapers, prepare and lodge the BAS and close the books directly in Books Review

5. Next, you can click on Send in the Send report package card to email the report package to a team member or client if required.

6. Then, click on Go to Tax Centre in the Prepare to Lodge card. From here you can select Prepare BAS and step through the BAS information. At the BAS Summary screen, you can either select Export to LodgeiT (to seamlessly prefill the data into the BAS form for electronic approval and lodgement) or Mark as Lodged (and then lodge using your usual method).

Books review provides a framework to streamline your BAS preparation and lodgement workflow.

7. Lastly, you can select to stop any further data entry into the period you have just finalised by selecting Close now in the Close the books card and adding the required Closing date. And that’s it. 

Books review provides a framework to streamline your BAS preparation and lodgement workflow. You can tailor each step in Books review to reflect your own processes so you and your team are consistently completing your BAS work, and it creates transparency by clearly showing where each BAS is up to. How much time can Books review save your practice each quarter? Take it for a run today.




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