Convert cash-basis books to accrual basis
Identifies and calculates the adjustments to move a set of cash-basis financials to accrual, with entries and a bridge.
The prompt
Help me convert a set of cash-basis financial statements to accrual basis.
Why we're converting: [e.g. "lender wants GAAP-basis statements", "investor due diligence", "monthly management reporting"]
Period: [DATES, plus opening date]
Cash-basis P&L and balance sheet: [PASTE]
Unpaid customer invoices at start and end of period: [AMOUNTS or AR aging]
Unpaid bills at start and end: [AMOUNTS or AP aging]
Other items: [prepaid expenses, accrued payroll and bonuses, customer deposits/deferred revenue, inventory, accrued interest, depreciation if not booked]
Steps:
1. For each item, calculate the opening and closing balance and the effect on the period's income (e.g. revenue + closing AR - opening AR).
2. Draft the adjusting entries, including the opening equity adjustment.
3. Build a bridge from cash-basis net income to accrual net income, item by item.
4. Flag items where I haven't given enough data, marked [NEED BALANCE].
Return:
1. An adjustments table: Item | Opening | Closing | P&L effect | Entry.
2. The cash-to-accrual net income bridge.
3. Adjusted P&L and balance sheet (only if all inputs are provided).
4. A short note on whether to keep accrual books going forward and what that requires monthly.
Note that tax reporting basis may differ from book basis - mark any tax implication as [TAX PREPARER TO CONFIRM].
Highlighted [brackets] are blanks to replace with your own details.
Fill in the blanks and use this promptMore Finance & Accounting prompts
What to fill in
- DATES, plus opening date
- PASTE
- AMOUNTS or AR aging
- AMOUNTS or AP aging
- NEED BALANCE
- TAX PREPARER TO CONFIRM
How this prompt is built
This prompt follows the Few-Shot structure (Few-shot prompting). A few-shot prompt includes one or more worked examples of the input and the output you want, so the model can copy the pattern instead of guessing it.
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