After talking to small-business owners around Cheyenne I have realized how big of a burden bookkeeping can be as a business owner. Most of the time it is a necessary evil because you have to keep your numbers in order for your business to succeed and for you to keep up on tax payments. Several business owners stated how much they dread logging into Quickbooks each week. Sometimes funds are unavailable to hire a bookkeeper so here are my tried and true secrets to help you keep up on all the bookkeeping tasks!
01. Connect all business accounts to Quickbooks
Having all of your accounts linked into Quickbooks will save you so much time right off the bat! It gets complicated if credit and debit cards that you use for business aren’t connected. You have to back track, look at statements, input them manually etc.
Having your accounts connected saves you time right away because your transactions are automatically downloading every day.
02. Check in every day if possible
Once your transactions start coming in, it’s a good idea to set aside time every day to go through and categorize these transactions. It becomes very overwhelming if you don’t check in often and then you log in and see that some transactions are duplicates, some haven’t come in yet, or there was an error. If you keep up on it daily it becomes a quick 10-minute task and it gives you peace of mind that your finances are exactly where you expect them to be.
03. Look at your profit and loss every month
Once all transactions for the previous month have been entered, go through and create a Profit/Loss Report. Quickbooks makes it simple to create these reports. You can even customize the dates if you want to see a few months back or the Profit/Loss for the Year to Date. It is such a good idea to check in with how much your business grew (or didn’t grow) over the course of the month.
04. Find trainings and videos to help you out
Even as a bookkeeper I still have to search for certain tutorials every now and then. We are all learning and taking on a small-business has its challenges. It’s okay to do a quick Google search to help you with your Quickbooks frustrations. Youtube has a ton of great resources for helping people through specific tasks.
05. Keep your paperwork organized
Paperwork is a huge deal with small-business management! I freak out a little when papers are everywhere. Since I work from home and my “office” is a shared living space I can’t have client documents out and about. I use a file folder with slots for each month for each client. My business documents are in a filing cabinet. These are my two preferences for organizing paperwork. Other great options include: receipt binder, file folders with labels, document safe bag, linen file organizer box, expanding file folder, mesh zipper pouch, and mobile file cabinet.
Amazon Link for these resources
06. Put aside money for taxes
I recommend that clients pay off their taxes quarterly. Oftentimes they hire an accountant to help with this because certain quarters can be a bit overwhelming (especially in April when you are doing personal taxes as well). In your business budget sheet put aside an extra 10-15% of your monthly income for taxes. It’s okay if it sits in your account until tax time as long as you know that money is to be used for taxes. If you are worried you might spend it on something else it would be wise to move that money to a savings account.
Bookkeeping can be an enjoyable part of owning a business. Reach out if you have more questions or would like more guidance on these ideas.
Happy Filing!
Leave a Reply