Accounting Tips For You

The Six Top Reasons to Use Financial Software For Your Small Business

If you are a small business owner who is frustrated at working so many hours and is looking for some relief, using Financial Software for all your bookkeeping needs can help. Here’s why:

Time Management- The best reason to use Financial Software is because it will save you time and money. Financial Software is faster, calculates for you, fills in repetitive information automatically saving you enormous blocks of time. Most can email an invoice in the blink of a second, create a report on the spot. Information is at your finger tips and can be retrieved in several formats. Reminders, auto payments , memorized reports and printing checks are just a few more options that can save you time each week.

Accurate Balances- Make your business decisions based on numbers, not on emotions. Find out if the product you are selling is really profitable. Bank reconciliations and statements from credit cards and loans can be matched to the penny. Customer and vendor accounts have information on credits and true balances. Know exactly what is owed to you, and who you owe! You have a true picture of your business only when all this information is applied correctly. If you are a business owner who puts $10,000 in the bank, then writes out checks for $9999, and thinks that is how to keep business records, you will not be successful in the long run. There are too many areas that are not being carefully monitored.

Budgets and Planning- Budgets are fairly easy to set up in Financial Software. No more excel sheets and lengthy worksheets with pivot tables. You can actually create a budget by using your Profit and Loss from last year, then adjust the figures. You can start from scratch and enter the figures for a month, and have the software calculate for the entire year. Its really simple to add new areas, cut back and do ‘what if’ scenarios. Then during the year you can run reports that let you check if you are on budget, or over. Planning for the future is proactive and makes good business sense.

Taxes and costs to prepare returns are lowered- Do your bookkeeping like it’s April 15th all year long. Every amount you enter will be categorized. At year end, the information is at your CPA’s finger tips. Tax planning is easier, and the amount of hours the CPA needs to work on the file is shortened, saving you money. The security of knowing all the information you need is there and not in a brown paper bag somewhere in a closet is wonderful.

Memorized Transactions- This is one of the best features but the least used, which can save the most money! For instance, take a landscaper who cuts the same grass four times a month. He creates his invoice on the first month, then memorizes it to come up the lst of every month. Within a few seconds it becomes a new invoice each month and saves him an enormous amount of time. Time = money. He can spend his time cutting more grass!

Reports- Every business owner needs to be able to review his Profit and Loss Report each month. The wealth of information from this one report tells him if he should continue to do what he has planned, or change course. It lists all his revenue and expenses from the prior month and gives him answers to the many questions he has, and tells if he has made a profit for the month. How can you tell if you are meeting the goals you set for yourself if you do not have this information? Setting up a very industry specific chart of accounts will bring you the most interesting details here. Spend your time and money on the best growth opportunities, test and measure outcomes from advertising or sales campaigns. The information is all here. The Balance Sheet goes hand in hand with the P&L, telling you the true numbers on assets, liabilities and equity. Most software packages will also allow you to do Year over Year comparisons. Most reports can be printed in summary or detail.

These areas are important reasons to consider making the jump from manual records and various excel sheets to a Financial Software package. There are several different companies that offer this type of product. Most are user friendly and made for the average person. Although most owners don’t use all the features, it’s nice to know you have an option to learn more about the program as time goes by.

Don’t waste anymore of your precious time in this area. Your time is wisely used when you spend more time doing what you are an expert in, using resources such as Financial Software to shorten the work load.

Terry Santore is a Certified Public Bookkeeper. She is Certified by Intuit as a ProAdvisor for their QuickBooks products. She has many years of experience in the accounting field and enjoys helping small business owners reach their goals.

http://www.BitsofSilver.com

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The Six Top Reasons to Use Financial Software For Your Small Business

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