Friday, June 29, 2012

Small Business Bookkeeping Is the Secret to Success

Small business bookkeeping is the secret to business success that isn't actually that much of a secret. However, getting your small business finances in order in such a way that you can continue to execute the core activities of the business at the same time, and can use accounting analysis on that data for decision making is often quite difficult. Accounting can be broken up into two components, and a combination of effective habits and online bookkeeping services can help with each of them.

The first component is data collection and organization. It's easy to say you'll keep records of expenses, income, and changing inventory. It's even relatively easy to set up a basic system for filing receipts and logging income. However, going beyond that to effective organizing requires time and effort, as well as an effective small business bookkeeping tool. It's even better if you can afford a basic bookkeeping assistant to handle the day to day data collection tasks, but many small business owners don't have the budget for that.

The need to collect and organize income and expense data suggests a number of other specific tasks and strategies. Expense tracking is very important, and having a framework in place to categorize expenses, as well as to control how they are paid for, helps to generate useable data that doesn't exclude anything essential. It's why you should keep your personal and business checking accounts separate, and why it's best to pay bills with a credit card or check whenever possible. If you can find a way to automate any part of this process it helps a lot. The more effort you put into data collection and organization, the better your accounting foundation will be - though it is important to balance your time spent on this with the actual accounting, decision-making, and running of the business.

The second component is data analysis, what many people think of as the actual accounting. One of the benefits of bookkeeping is getting information that allows you to evaluate your business processes to help you make better decisions. Accounting tools like the Profit and Loss statement and cash flow statement come from analyzing the raw data and make it easier to interpret and understand your business' position. Accounting software often automatically generates these basic graphs, charts, and diagrams, allowing you to specify the time range and focus on any specific expense category.

Small business bookkeeping is not easy. But having a successful small business without it is impossible. If you stay focused on the basic priorities of these two components of accounting, you can make a plan to implement an efficient accounting strategy to help you run your business.


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Small Business Bookkeeping Can Make or Break Your New Business. Succeed with the Tools You Need for Easy Small Business Bookkeeping from http://www.outright.com


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1 comment:

  1. small business bookkeeping is important to your business financing..and i think bookkeeping is one of the hardest parts of running a small business..i like the way you explained your this post. thanks for sharing this post.
    BAS Agent

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