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A proper business accounting system is an important part of business infrastructure |
Where
do you see yourself in 5 years time? Hopefully it's on some tropical
island in the middle of the ocean, but even if you don't find that
level of success you will still want your business to be running
along smoothly. You will need to sort your finances out if you want
to stay in business because even if you're making money you can still
go under because of an accounting error. Take a look at some of the
things you never want to forget.
Keep things separate
They've
said for years that it's a bad idea to mix business and pleasure. It
turns out this advise can be used in a lot of different situations
and one of them is when dealing with your finances. The reason we
have a separate business account isn't because having two different
cards makes us feel special. It's because you can manage your
finances so much easier. You also won't feel like you're chasing your
tail around the room as soon as it's time to pay your taxes.
Use great software
What
do you do when you want to publish a picture of a product on your
website? You certainly don't draw the product on a piece of paper and
scan it onto the computer before publishing the scanned image on your
site. You take the photo with a digital camera and you edit it using
software before it's ready for the world to see. I don't want to
dwell on this too much because you don't need to know
what software
does. Just know it saves you lots of time, money, and hassle.
Hire a professional
The
reason people become great is usually because they spend a huge
amount of time working on their business. They don't spend too much
time in it doing all the grunt work. When you have money available
you pay someone to carry out the jobs that don't bring in any income
because it means you can spend all your time doing the jobs that do
bring in money. That is why hiring someone to look after your books
should be done quickly even if it's not full-time.
Make the time
How
many hours do you spend on the golf course every week? You probably
spend ever more time than that sitting on the couch watching TV.
Looking over your finances isn't pretty and you certainly won't have
fun while doing it, but you've got to make the time even if it's just
a quick peek at your books every week. Even if you don't do the books
yourself it's still good practice to have a small idea of what is
going on at a basic accounting level because money is important.
People should be paying
You
might think this last one is a joke because it's a little silly, but
people actually forget they should be getting paid. If your clients
and customers don't send you money when you bill them you will need
to send them a follow up. You will need to keep doing this until they
pay. Of course you already know this, but it could slip your mind. As
long as you don't forget a business needs to get paid you should be
fine, but if you do forget more than once it can seriously mess up
your finances.
You can do it
Do
you think anything we've talked about today sounds complicated? It
shouldn't because the general running a business is easy. Finding out
exactly what people want and persuading them to hand over money is
the only hard part. That means you don't want to spend all your time
dealing with the financial side of things because of mistakes you
keep making.
About the author: Nicola
Joseph, the author of this article, work with, Reckon Store Next Door, leading providers of online accounting software. She loves
the outdoors and loves going camping and hiking on weekends.
Image license: Peter Baskerville, CC BY-SA 2.0
Image license: Peter Baskerville, CC BY-SA 2.0
An accounting professional will have an in depth knowledge of the systems, and will help you focus on running your business. Great post!
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