Frequently Asked Bookkeeping Questions

Tax payments plague small businesses. Planning is your best defense. Hoard your cash all year long if you expect a large tax payment at year end. Assume taxes will equal 30% of your net profits.

Many small business open a separate account for taxes only to raid the account for an emergency. Better to have a 3 month cash cushion for emergencies and use fiscal restraint even when you see your cash balance rising.

Thinking about making a major purchase? Make sure you have enough cash for the purchase and taxes. BudgetEase can help you use your financial information to  make that decision or build you a cash forecast so you know what funds you have always.  Use the  Schedule a Call button above to get started. 

We love QuickBooks Online. QBO is easy to access and keep up to date. Sadly it is not ready for all our clients.

If you are a small business with an inventory to manage, you need to progress invoice or your existing QuickBooks file is too big, QBO is not for you. If you are a very small start-up and are concerned about fees, using QuickBooks Desktop or even an excel spreadsheet might be a better option.

Yes. A great way to get to your destination is with a map. A budget helps you formulate that map. QuickBooks makes the process of putting together a budget and then tracking your progress a snap.  Budgets are so important to us that it is included in the name of our business and we prepare a budget and enter it in QuickBooks for all our clients.

To start, many businesses have very simple needs for financial information.  As soon as you have a payroll, are invoicing and managing cash flow you are better off hiring someone to do this work and spending your time on generating revenue for your business.  Entering transactions correctly is a small part of bookkeeping. You need a budget, efficient processes and a coach to help you manage expenses and hold you accountable for your goals.

The time to get the work done varies greatly by the expertise of the individual doing the work.  You want to set-up your monthly bookkeeping for efficiency: use check lists, memorized transactions for recurring entries and use rules to consistently enter transactions to the correct account(never turn on Auto Entry).  Entering each transaction correctly into your financial software takes about 10% of the time monthly to ensure accurate financial information.  You can figure that if it takes 1 hour to do the work it takes 2 more to review it and manage trickier transactions.  We have a thorough checklist we perform monthly you can access here. 

Yes, it is the most commonly used financial software and is a great fit for most industries.  If your revenue is less that $100,000 a year you might use excel to keep your subscription fees down. If you have a manufacturing or distribution business, QuickBooks Desktop is better suited for your needs. Retail, service, and eCommerce business are best using QuickBooks Online.