How to Get on Top of Your Business Finances
Getting behind on bookkeeping activities is one of the most stressful and frustrating things in the lives of many business owners. This is made even worse when the reason your books aren’t looking all that good is due to events out of your control, such as disruptions to trade caused by government regulations or the changing nature of customer shopping preferences as more consumers look online to buy their goods today.
Nevertheless, catching up and staying on top of your finances is a necessary activity for all businesses and there are several strategies you can use to keep your finances up to date and accurate throughout the year.
Create a Schedule
Catching up on your bookkeeping and keeping your business finances up to date is the first step in making sure you don’t fall behind with all things accounting-related. Even if time isn’t on your side or you’re struggling to find a way to pay off your business financing, it’s important to take a moment to set up a plan for how you and your bookkeeping team will maintain a long-term strategy,
Rather than making any sudden moves, it’s best to block out some time with everyone relevant to your finances so that you can all come together and figure out the best timetable of activities for getting on top of everything. This can mean itemizing various issues and putting them in a list of priorities, or planning in weekly meetings to cover expenses with your leadership team.
While many other tasks might jump ahead of bookkeeping on your list of priorities, setting aside time each week to review the books can give you critical insight into the financial health of your business. And when you’re back on top of everything, a regular review session or accounting meeting will give you a good basic snapshot of your revenues, expenses and cash flow and inform your business decisions.
Track and Expenses
Handling business expenses can be incredibly time-consuming and tedious if you don’t have a good process in place. You should make a habit of reviewing your bank statements and categorising transactions to determine how they should be classified.
You should do this proactively and determine which category each expense item falls into. Keeping your accounts up to date by tracking purchases and payments will help you track your cash flow in real-time and develop more long-term strategies that stop you from getting behind in the first place.
There are many ways to scan and digitally record receipts today, which is a good way to record, label, and categorize each expense so they are correctly logged. For instance, many business bank account apps will let you annotate your expenses so that they are organised according to your personal method. Also, many business credit cards already sort expenses by category, which can simplify your expense tracking.
Use Accounting Software
Cloud-based software like Xero, Sage and QuickBooks can help you keep your books up to date by allowing you to process transactions directly and reconcile every transaction. This can also save you time and money, by automating many bookkeeping functions such as handling payroll, tracking daily transactions, and managing invoices.
Many of these programs are geared toward small business owners too, providing a variety of templates for businesses to streamline the accounting process.
Consider Outsourcing
Getting experts on board, such as payroll outsourcing companies in London, to help you unravel any bookkeeping complications can be a worthy investment. This is especially true if your in-house accountant is currently overwhelmed and finding it hard to keep up with their daily duties.
This solution will help give you some immediate accounting capacity and support, while making it possible for you to automate accounting, bookkeeping, and tax-filing functions for the future so that you never fall behind again when it comes to anything accounting-related.
Learn More
If you want to learn more about payroll outsourcing companies in London or strategies for staying on top of your finances, get in touch with us at Paycheck.