Life in the small business lane is fast paced, confusing, and full of distractions. Getting your bookkeeping easy and manageable is a great way to clear your brain, ease some stress and get ahead! Here’s some tips from the accountants and bookkeepers at Northwest Accounting.  

Create Your Own Money Day  

Money tends to run away when we’re not paying attention – so build in time to pay attention! A Money Day is a day when you go over your accounts and have a look at what you’re receiving and paying for. Numbers on a profit and loss statement are a great start, but what do they really mean? Take the time to have a look at your expenses. Perhaps you’re paying for extra services you don’t need, or someone has billed you twice and no one has noticed. What are the bigger goals for the month or quarter, and the year? Are you consolidating your business or looking to expand, and how does that affect income, outgoings and cashflow? How does the quarter/year fit into the grand scheme of your business plan? Are you on track or do you need to make some changes?  

Create Your Own Money Time 

Money Time is usually much less in depth, and is a 15 minute check in at the end of the day. Any new receipts or invoices that need to be sorted or paid? Any anomalies to think about later? Did expected expenses or income arrive, and if not, why? This is not the time to build the future but to make small adjustment and maintenance actions for the bigger goals created during your Money Day.  

Separate your Business and Personal Finances Completely 

If you’re paying employees from a different account each cycle, there’s something very wrong. If you’re pulling money from the business to cover home expenses without a structure, you’re heading for trouble.  

Using a completely separate bank (or bank account) makes life easy for you and your tax agent. 

Your accountant will have less bank statements to check, and the movement of money from business to personal is much easier to follow. This is a surefire way to keep your financial structure as low effort as possible. Plus when you log into your business account, you are training your brain to think of the business money as different from the home money. Win win!  

This doesn’t stop you from moving money around on the spur of the moment, but your reconciliations will show financial movement very clearly, and you may be in for a surprise or two!  

Use Proper Accounting Software or Services 

Xero (our favourite), Quickbooks, Wave, or Freshbooks are all accounting services that can pull information directly from your bank and even sort your details automatically. This can save data entry time, and makes categorisation of expenses easy! Being organised also saves you money as you reduce the bookkeeping fees to do with your taxes!  

Automate Automate Automate 

If you know that you have regular expenses coming up, use the automatic payment features of your accounts to ensure your payments are delivered in time. You can either create regular payments, or contact the provider and arrange regular debits. Spreading out payments means spreading out the stress of a large lump sum payment, which is another great way to make life easy in your bookkeeping.  

How can I learn more about easy bookkeeping?  

Our team at Northwest Accountancy has created the perfect resource that covers all of this and more. Called the Unexpected Bookkeeper, the community hub has video resources, group Zoom coaching and support, a community and more. We’re launching in March, so click here to sign up to our wait list for more details or you can book a free chat about how we can help.