Time Saving Tips
In any business, a fair number of papers are generated. These papers, fondly known as "your books", can wreak havoc with your business and your pocketbook if they are not carefully tended to.
Here are some suggestions how to save time and money in "your books" for your small business.
Be organized
Putting your receips into a shoebox is easy and quick, but somebody has to sort it out at the end of day. Create yourself several shoeboxes. Label them, and drop the receipt into the appropriate box.
For example, create several boxes which say:
- Fuel
- Meals and Entertainment
- Utilities and telephone
- Inventory purchases
- Miscellaneous
Then you can drop the receipts into the shoebox, but they will be slightly categorized. If you do this, you will save hours and hours of needless sortation.
Cash versus other payment methods
When you bring us your books, we can sometimes work directly from the bank statement, and only refer to your receipts when needed. However, doing this misses any receipts that you pay cash, or you pay from your personal account. In this case, we must go through each receipt to ensure that we are catching all expenses.
Depending how you treat your cash, you can save time and money in bookkeeping costs just by simply spending your money in a different way!
Don't mix business and personal
Often when we run a business, we tend to think of our business bank accounts as an extention of ourselves. But that is really not so, especially in incorporated businesses.
When you spend personal money from your business bank account, your bookkeeper must then do more work. They must seperate out what is business and what is personal. Quite often, receipts are not labelled, and this gives more potential to errors.
Not only do you spend dollars in bookkeeper time by mixing, you also are leaving yourself open to your bookkeeper mistaking a business receipt as personal (or vice versa).
So make sure that you are always using your business accounts for business, and transfer funds to your personal accounts when you need them.
Take your books to your bookkeeper monthly
A bookkeeper will see many numbers throughout the year, and if they only see your books once a year, then it is difficult for them to remember what your deductions are and how you operate. If they are doing it monthly, they can be quicker at doing the entry.
Understand the difference between cost and time
Your bookkeeper likely has the advanced features of your accounting software. If so, then they can perform functions quicker than you can. For example, we have a full version of Simply Accounting. We can generate payroll for 10 employees in less than 15 minutes, and email you the paystubs.
If your version of the accounting software does not do that, then you are manually calculating the payroll amounts each time.
Which is faster? Which is more cost efficient?
Find a bookkeeper and stay with them
If you find yourself looking for a new bookkeeper each year, then you are probably spending a lot of unnecessary money. Anytime a new bookkeeper looks at a new set of books, the costs will increase as they try to get to know your business and understand how you work. It will always be more expensive for you to have a new bookkeeper each year.
Use the web
Use the web for every opportunity you can. Let's suppose that you are a person who is "on the go" and visits people for a living. Using a portable web connection, here are some suggestions for you to save time generating paper.
- Have your webpage setup so that you can generate your invoice from the comfort of your vehicle, email the invoice to the client AND your bookkeeper at the same time.
- Make sure all your forms are available online.
- Have a virtual bulletin board setup so that all staff can read what is happening with your business from anywhere they happen to be. PLUS, you can post whenever you want, provided you have an internet connection.
