March 31 is approaching – tax balance date for most people.

Get your house in order to minimize hassles and tax.

Bad debts

If someone owes you money and you don’t think they’ll pay, you need to write it off as a bad debt before your balance date. You can’t decide later—it’s against the rules. Check your debtors ledger, and if you’ve done everything reasonable to collect the money but it’s still unpaid, write it off. Remove it from your ledger.

If you use a simple system, like keeping unpaid invoices, make it clear the debt was written off before balance date. For instance, write “Written off 20 February 2025” on the invoice, sign it, and scan it back into your records. You can still try to recover the debt later.

If you do get paid, treat it as income under a name like “bad debts recovered”.

Stock-take

Organise your stock and get rid of anything you can’t sell. If you still have it at balance date, include it in your stock-take at cost price.

If you want to value stock below cost, you’ll need proof that its market value is lower. For example, show a competitor selling the same product for less, and keep a record.

Make sure you don’t double count or miss anything. For instance, if you’ve paid for stock that hasn’t turned up yet, include it in your stock numbers since you’ve already paid for it.

Logbooks for motor vehicles

If you need a logbook for your vehicle, remember it has to be

updated every three years. At some point, Inland Revenue could want to see the log book, so it’s better to stay compliant.

You need to track your travel for three months to calculate how much is for business versus personal use. We recommend recording both business and personal travel – it’s easy to forget a trip, and anything unrecorded will default to personal use.

Take an odometer reading after work on the last day of your financial year and note it down. If you’re running a limited liability company and were accounting for private vehicle use as a fringe benefit (usually 20 percent of the GST- inclusive cost), you don’t need a logbook.

Maintenance of equipment

If you’ve got maintenance work planned and want to reduce your taxable income for the year, get it done before balance date.

Holiday pay

If you pay holiday pay within 63 days of the end of the financial year (by 2 June for March balance dates), you can claim it as an expense in the previous year. Just include it as a creditor on your list of bills owing at balance date.