It’s not just the busy tax season when accountants have more work than time. Clients facing new credit requirements, unanticipated employee departures and the need to learn how to clean up messy bookkeeping can keep accountants’ phones ringing. Even when accountants are neck-deep in filings, forms and statements, clients still need help with a myriad of tasks tied to the numbers of the business. When there is not one more minute in the day or night and the phone rings with a request for help, thinking of BudgetEase as a solution for your clients just makes sense.
A common first task for many of the new clients that engage BudgetEase is catching up their QuickBooks file to date. Often times it has been years since a reconciliation has been done, principle and interest have been lumped together for just as long or the bank feeds have not been cleared of transactions. When tackling such a project, organization and the setting of expectations is important. Whether you are an accountant beginning to catch up a file or a business owner that has an outdated QuickBooks file, it pays to have an understanding of what the catch-up journey might look like.
There are several ways to ensure your business’s financial data is recorded accurately and available for reporting when you need it. You can hire a full- or part-time employee to be located in your office, you can contract a bookkeeping firm to send a staff person to your office once a week, or you can hire a virtual bookkeeper.
Just as a personal budget can help ensure enough money is saved for retirement, a business budget can help ensure the company can succeed long into the future. Budgets also help start-ups step off on the right foot. Even without historical expenses data, taking the time to forecast income and expenses for the month, quarter and year(s) ahead will help keep your business lean, efficient and open for business.
Your business has a focus and chances are it is not bookkeeping. You can try to manage your accounting needs in-house, assign some tasks to an office manager and take others on yourself, but think about a day where you didn’t have to do any accounting work. Your office manager could focus on customer service and you could focus on running and growing your business. In addition to making better use of your time, scalability, cost and expertise are other reasons why outsourcing your accounting operations makes good business sense.
One of the benefits of hiring an accounting/bookkeeping expert is the ability to meet with them after month-end close, to have them explain your financial statements to you and to help draw your attention to important aspects of the financial data. A monthly financial review meeting is a good starting point to ensuring your business is staying on track. Here is what we recommend you review:
If you pay your employees every other week but your income is recognized monthly, your revenue will not be matched to the expenses that helped earn it. On your income statement (P&L), expenses would be understated some months and overstated others.
5-Point Checklist: What to Send Your Accountant
Where does the time go? If you are already looking at the calendar and wondering how to accomplish a lot of reporting in a short time for tax season, we understand.
OOPS! 2017 is over and you forgot to do your bookkeeping. What should you do? You are not the only one. Every day we get a call from an optometrist or property manager who never kept any records last year. Here is what we do when faced with this dilemma.
With all your 1099s done for 2017, it’s time to prepare to make the job easier – next year. Did you scramble to find copies of your vendors’ W9s? Here are some tips that can proactively help you slide through next January with ease:
