How CPA firms request a bank statement from clients
By Arthur Teboul, DokuTrak · Published
In short
Ask for the monthly statements of every bank account the business held during the year, including savings, closed accounts and any account the owner opened for a side project, from January through December plus January of the next year. Ask for the bank’s PDF statements rather than exports, so year-end balances can be tied to the books.
Why CPA firms need a bank statement
Year-end close starts with the bank reconciliation. The December ending balance on each statement has to agree with cash in the books once outstanding checks and deposits in transit are accounted for, and the January statement shows which of those actually cleared. An account missing from the books, sometimes one the owner forgot about, hides income or expenses and leaves the balance sheet on the business return wrong.
What exactly to ask for
All twelve monthly statements for the tax year, for checking, savings, money market and merchant deposit accounts in the business’s name, plus the first statement of the following year. Ask the owner to confirm the list of accounts, and to include any account closed during the year with its final statement.
What to check when it arrives
- The December ending balance of each account agrees with the reconciled cash balance in the books.
- Every account on the statements exists in the chart of accounts, and every bank account in the books has its statements.
- Transfers between business accounts, and between business and personal accounts, are identified so they are not counted as income or expense.
Email to send your client
Replace the bracketed parts. The same text fits in the message of a DokuTrak request (up to 1,000 characters).
Subject: Bank statements for the year-end close
Hi [Client name],
To close the books for the year, I need the statements for every bank account the business used, January through December, plus the January statement of this year.
Please include savings accounts, any account you closed during the year, and any account you opened for a specific project. One forgotten account is enough to keep the year-end numbers from tying.
The PDF statements from your online banking are best, rather than spreadsheet exports. Could you send them by [date]? If one bank makes old statements hard to find, tell me which one and I will walk you through it.
Thank you, [Your name]
Ask once. DokuTrak does the chasing.
- Your client uploads from one link, with no account and no password.
- Reminders go out on a schedule, by default 2, 5, 10 and 14 days after the request, until the file arrives.
- With AI review switched on in your workspace (it is off by default), each upload gets a first pass that flags a file that is not a bank statement, an unreadable or blurry scan or a copy where one of these is missing or cut off: the account holder, the statement period. It says so when it is not sure.
- You accept every file or mark it for re-upload, and your client gets the note by email. The AI never accepts a file.