When it comes to running a small business, there is so much involved. Marketing, production, staff, research, development... the list goes on and on. Finance is also a big and important part, and keeping accurate tabs on your company's financials is crucial. To help business owners along, here are some bookkeeping time savers to help make financial management a little more efficient.
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.
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.
Want to make sure your business QuickBooks (QB) file agrees with your tax return? Best practice is to use your accountant’s adjusting journal entries or an accountant copy update file to bring your QB in line with the tax return. If neither are available, we suggest using the following approach.
I’m often asked, “Do I need to keep my receipts for you, my bookkeeper, or are my bank and credit card statements saved through my financial institution enough? If I’m audited, the auditors can surely verify expenses by simply reviewing my QuickBooks or viewing bank records, right?”
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.
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:
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.
Intuit has aligned with a bank called Green Dot to provide QuickBooks Online users with an integrated checking account. This account, called “QuickBooks Cash and Envelopes,” is designed to house funds received from your QuickBooks Payments merchant services. Per Intuit, it “combines a checking account, savings envelopes, merchant service payments, and a cash flow planner all in one integrated interface.” Here is a quick look at Intuit’s selling points:
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