In today’s business climate, you need to be proactive. Planning ahead for issues that may come your way will ensure that you don’t have any surprises or headaches when year-end arrives. With that said, running a business requires you to be reactive. Striking a balance between planning for the things you can plan for and reacting to the things you can’t is difficult. That’s why your operations need to be as streamlined as possible.
Ensuring that you are in good hands financially means having a system in place to handle your day to day business activities. This means your bookkeeping should be taken care of as efficiently as possible. If you systematically arrange your bookkeeping, your accountant will thank you at the end of Q4. How are you going to ensure that your bookkeeping is well taken care of? Simply put, through automation of the day to day activities. In this post, we’ll go through some ways in which your bookkeeping processes can be automated in order to make your life simpler.
Gone are the days where the bookkeeper would wear a green visor and crank through numbers day in and day out in order to do the accounting for your business. Today’s bookkeeping can be handled by almost anyone. Digitizing your financial data makes it more accessible and workable, whereas in the past one would need multiple documents and reams of paper to keep a proper account of everything. By using technology, your business is able to make your finances more manageable.
Accounting programs have helped countless businesses on the Gold Coast keep their books in line for many years. QuickBooks, Xero, and others like them have helped add value to businesses by keeping all of your accounting activities in an easy-to-reach place. Their interfaces are user-friendly, meaning anyone in charge of the accounting can keep solid records of business transactions.
Additionally, these programs can help automate the rest of your business systems.
Automating your invoicing and accounts receivable is an excellent way to simplify your day to day activities. With the invoicing and accounts receivable on autopilot, you’ll be able to easily track who’s paid and who hasn’t without digging through acres of receipts. Through your standard accounting software (QuickBooks, for example) you should be able to access a payment tracking option. This works great if you send electronic invoices.
For accounts payable, be sure to look into setting up automatic payments for your vendors. This information can be banked in your accounting software as well. If you’re a small business, set up the payments to go directly from your business card. Automatic bank payments make things much easier.
Your employees are what keep your business moving forward. They are your link to your customers, they take care of your shipments and are trusted with the menial tasks that make your business work. For that, they need to be paid on time. Payroll can get a little more complicated than simply writing a cheque at week’s end. There is paperwork that the ATO needs to see, taxes to be calculated, and potential tax withholdings that need to be made. Automating your payroll services can make this process much more straightforward. Online payroll services help eliminate the opportunity for mistakes and save you time overall. These services can include direct deposit, calculating tax withholdings, to preparing W-2 forms. Once automated, payroll becomes a much smaller problem.
Reporting your financial situation is important to both you and the ATO. Automating your reporting can save you serious time and effort throughout the fiscal year. By automating your financial reporting, you’re able to schedule reports for whenever is most beneficial to your business. Reporting like this will give you great visibility into operational information and keep you abreast of what needs to happen with your business going forward. Automated reporting also helps your bookkeeper set and keep deadlines.
Automation of day to day bookkeeping activities takes a bit of time to fully integrate into your business if you’re new to the technology. But once you’ve made the switch to automated services, your business will run far smoother than before. Instead of worrying about the processes involved with running the business, you can focus on making your business better while technology takes care of the rest.
If you are interested in moving to an automated bookkeeping system, Darcy Bookkeeping & Business Services is here to help. Our team of professionals cares about your success. That’s why we have employees who specialize in bookkeeping automation and improving the overall performance of your business accounting. If you would like some help in this area, don’t hesitate to give our office a call. We’d love to help your business succeed.