The 31 March year-end checklist

The New Zealand tax year closes on 31 March, and a handful of actions only count if they happen before that date. None of them take long; all of them are annoying to discover on 2 April. This is the checklist, split into what must happen before balance date and what makes the weeks after easy.

Before 31 March (the ones with a hard edge)

• Write off genuinely bad debts, in the books, now.A debt written off before balance date is deductible this year (and on the invoice basis, its GST comes back); one "provided for" or written off in April waits a full year. The late-payers guide covers when writing off is the right call; the deadline is what makes March the month to decide.
• Buy the small gear you already intended to buy.Assets at $1,000 or less (before GST) purchased by 31 March are a full deduction in this year's return; the same purchase in April deducts a year later. This is a timing decision for planned purchases, not a reason to buy things (spending $900 to save ~$300 of tax is still spending $600).
• Check your logbook and floor plan are current. If your vehicle logbook is approaching three years old, or your home office changed shape this year, the records behind those claims need to reflect reality before the year they support closes.
• Chase what can still be chased.A payment that arrives before balance date is this year's cash and this year's certainty; late March is a natural moment for the polite nudge on everything outstanding.

The close-out (the weeks after)

• Reconcile the year: every invoice issued, its status, every expense with its receipt, filed where the IR3 and the IR10 can be built from them without archaeology.
• The March GST return(period ending 31 March) is due 7 May, with the year's figures fresh; it's the natural moment to confirm GST collected matches GST set aside.
• File early if the year was good. The return is due 7 July, but a big year means a big terminal tax and possibly provisional instalments starting in August; the sooner the assessment exists, the longer the runway to arrange for it.
• Reset the year ahead: revisit your set-aside percentage against the effective rate your new income level implies, and your rate itself if costs or the market moved.

What this list deliberately skips

Year-end folklore includes aggressive moves this checklist doesn't make: shifting income between years, invented expenses, and provisions dressed as write-offs. Timing genuine transactions you were making anyway is planning; manufacturing transactions for the tax effect is the thing audits exist to find. When a year-end move needs a justification longer than one sentence, it's a question for your accountant, not a checklist.

How Coffer helps

Most of this checklist is trivial when the records kept themselves all year. Coffer holds the invoice statuses (so the chase list and the bad-debt candidates are one glance), the expenses with their dates (so the $1,000-rule timing is visible), and the year's tax set-aside against what the IR3 will shortly make official. The year end becomes a review, not a reconstruction.