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Its Time: Stop balancing your books Manually

Most companies fail to see how modern accounting can benefit their businesses, If you love your business but hate bookkeeping, help is at hand.

Follow these tips to spend less time doing admin and more time doing what you love.

If you’re like most small business owners, you probably don’t usually feel a thrill of excitement at the prospect of doing the books. if you want to make your business venture the success it deserves to be, you’ll need to get on top of your financial admin.

Ditch unnecessary paperwork

OK, so not all paper will go. The paperless office is like science fiction’s flying car: always predicted but never quite arriving. Still, it would be hard to argue you need all that paper in your office when there’s software out there that can tackle bookkeeping more efficiently. The problems with paper are legion. It gets lost or misfiled; coffee gets spilt on it; you use it to scribble notes on when a client calls and then accidentally throw it away; it’s hard to locate documents when you need them (such as at tax filing time), and it’s difficult to keep up to date.

What you can do

The more you record digitally, the quicker it is to access and the less time you spend doing the books.

Use accounting software for your bookkeeping (yes, that’s right, a good accounting solution will allow you to do the books and a lot more too) to declutter your workspace of all that paper.

Digitize your receipts

If you added up all the time you spend gathering, sorting and filing receipts you’d regret not spending it on more productive tasks. The biggest problem can be finding them. If you run a business on the move, they could be anywhere. Once they pile up, they’re difficult to tackle. Getting on top of them takes a larger and larger chunk out of the day, so you put them off endlessly. But avoiding managing your expenses will lose you money in the long run. You’ll probably end up paying more tax than you need to, and it’ll play havoc with your financial forecasting.

What you can do

By scanning and digitally recording receipts for just a few minutes every day, you can keep on top of them, keep the business finances up to date and save time.

You can use a smartphone app or a desktop scanner, included in many modern printers.

Invoice on time

It’s easy to become so busy with the day job that invoicing gets forgotten.

Don’t let this happen. If you want to keep cash flowing into your business, you need to invoice as soon as the work is finished and accepted.

What you can do

If a job is particularly large, you could figure out how to invoice some of it in stages to ensure you can keep your business running while you work on the project.

Good accounting software will support invoicing, flowing data from purchase orders, automating repetitive tasks and avoiding the time-consuming and error-prone rekeying of data.

Many clients will automatically pay within the agreed period, usually 30 days. But some might need a nudge, which brings us to…

Make sure your clients pay on time

No one likes chasing clients for payment. After all, these are the people you need to win work from to keep your business growing.

You don’t want to upset them. But if they’ve agreed on a fee and an invoice schedule, and accepted your work, they should pay on time. Some might miss payment dates by mistake. Others might try hanging on to their cash until they really have to pay. There may be some people who are in real financial trouble and are desperately short of cash.

What you can do

Look for accounting software that will track when invoices are overdue, and either alert you, or send an automated invoice reminder.

Sometimes an automated reminder is all it takes, relieving you of the unpleasant task of having to call to chase up your money. And it’s worth keeping in contact with your clients too. Having a regular dialogue with them means that if they are struggling to make payment on time, you have advanced notice and can take steps to make sure you’re not stuck when it comes to payday.

Automate your tax

No small business can avoid submitting tax documents – and that means finding and collating lots of different bits of information. If that information is all over the place – in paper receipts and invoices – this becomes an annoying and burdensome task. You’ll probably put it off till the last minute, causing you extra stress. And if you’re the kind of person who forgets to keep receipts, or accidentally throws them away, you can end up paying more tax than you have to.

What you can do

Much of the taxation process can be automated by the right software tools, if you keep your accounting up to date.

If you keep records throughout the year in your accounting software, your tax return needn’t be a pain when the time comes to file it.

Bank in real time

Why wait for a bank statement to learn if your finances are fighting fit or at death’s door?

Internet and mobile banking make it easy to stay on top of your transactions as they happen – and with the right software, those transactions can be automatically reconciled with your business accounts so everything adds up.

What you can do

Most banks offer online access accounts and a good accounting software package will automatically pull transaction info from your bank account and reconcile it with your accounts.

You can be proactive in managing your cash, spending, investments and borrowing. This will help your business access finance in the future and set it on a path to growth.

Consult with an ERP Consultant

As a Sage and Microsoft Dynamics Partner we are a leading expert with ERP Implementation & configuration. ERP Experts is ideally positioned to ensure you get the most out of your cloud ERP investment, whether you are a new or existing user.

If you have any questions or need help to choose the right ERP software package for you, then call us on +27 11 568 7795 / [email protected] or arrange for us to call you back.

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