It’s no secret that the majority of small business owners dislike crunching numbers; in part because keeping accurate financial records can be extremely time consuming, confusing and it may involve expensive, hard-to-use software. According to SimCorp USA Inc. and the Financial Executives Consulting Group, 64 percent of small businesses manage their money half-heartedly out of shoeboxes and spreadsheets and lack a solid accounting system all together.
While keeping track of your businesses accounting can be a daunting task, implementing the right technologies can help you gain control and make the job much more manageable. Here are a few of our thoughts on the topic:
Take Accounting to the Cloud
Cloud accounting applications offer small business a plethora of advantages. For starters, taking your business to the cloud allows users to be able to work anywhere, at anytime. Cloud services also support easy collaboration, allowing other business partners or your accountant the ability to access information when needed.
Perhaps one of the most attractive features of Cloud accounting solutions is that your businesses data is automatically backed up, eliminating the risk of lost work. Here are a few Cloud accounting applications that we really like.
Quickbooks Essentials
Quickbooks Essentials allows small businesses to easily create invoices, pay bills, manage expenses and keep track of the bottom line. In addition, the product offers online banking, advanced reporting and payroll and payroll tax assistance.
Pricing: Free 30-day trial. $51.16 per month
Wave Accounting
Wave Accounting is a totally free online accounting application for small businesses. The program allows you to track purchases and income that is already being tracked by your bank accounts and credit cards. Stop duplicating the work! With Wave you can import these transactions securely and automatically. Like other accounting apps – Wave allows you to create and send invoices, manage your finances, collaborate with other partners in real time and offer a suite of reports that include; balance sheets, income statements, sales tax reports and more. The best feature is that it’s backed up every hour so your data is always safe!
Pricing: Free!
Zoho Books
Zoho Books makes managing the money flowing in and out of your business super simple. You can stay on top of your customers and invoices while keeping expenses in check. Zoho allows you to record, monitor and reconcile your bank accounts and transactions, and collaborate with your accountant in real-time. With Zoho Books a business owner can get a clear picture of how much money your business is generating, manage your customers and invoice them either online or by mail, and automate recurring invoices, payment reminders and payment thank-you notes.
Pricing: Free 30-day trial. $24.00 per month, $240 per year
Outright.com
Outright streamlines the work involved with owning a business, helping entrepreneurs pay the right taxes, record financial transactions, and keep their businesses on track and growing. Outright helps entrepreneurs track all of their income and expenses to get their taxes done accurately.
Pricing: Free 30-day trial. $9.95 per month
Say Goodbye to Manual Entry
Many small businesses are still spending countless hours on their accounting processes, manually entering purchases, receipts and payments. Not only is this chore extremely time consuming but also it leaves room for human error that can lead to lost income or tax penalties. It’s time to get organized and start saving time.
Here at The Launch Pad, we use NeatDesk. NeatDesk allows us to scan receipts, business cards, or any document we wish to digitize. The technology is then able to identify and extract key information and automatically organize it in an easy-to-use database. The product also the ability to produce expense reports, digital contacts, tax records and searchable PDF documents. That’s not all! NeatDesk integrates with Excel, Quicken and TurboTax. Learn more about NeatDesk by reading our blog post, Meet Your New Office Manager: NeatDesk.
Double Your Vision
Multiple monitors can instantly increase your productivity and reduce errors. With two (or three) monitors you can have email open while working on an accounting spreadsheet and have your cloud accounting application up on the third screen. You can easily compare documents side by side on full size screens rather than clicking back and forth between them. Simply eliminating the time it takes to sort through open applications on just one monitor is a huge time saver. For about $350 you can set up yourself up with multiple monitors and increase productivity by as much as 20%. Learn more about multi-monitors by reading our blog post, TechRec: When One Monitor Isn’t Enough – Confessions of a “Multi-Mon” Addict.
Lockdown the Data
If you aren’t ready to leap into the Cloud, it’s vital that all of your accounting documents are securely protected and backed up. Our business continuity solution, RevITup BDR™, offers both real-time onsite backups integrated with our offsite data backup service every 15 minutes, ensuring that you will never lose more than 15 minutes worth of work.
Interested in how it works? The BDR generates an image of all hard drive partitions via an agent on the device at your location. After imaging each attached server, the BDR creates an independent 256-bit encryption tunnel and transmits the imaged data to our secure offsite location, where it is stored in an encrypted, compressed format. Should a disaster occur you could have your files within minutes! Want to learn more? Visit our Managed Data Backup page on our website.
We hope these tips will help lighten the load of the accounting function for your business. For more information, visit our website or contact Megan Meisner at mmeisner@launchpadonline.com or 813- 920-0788 x210.