Unfortunately, waiting till the end of the month or especially the end of the year can result in major headaches. For
this reason, Accounting Solutions has put together a few simple guidelines that may alleviate some of the task of
bookkeeping.
1. Stay Organized. Keep receipts of similar nature or vendor in the same place . This is one of the biggest
mistakes that business owner's make. Have you ever brought a shoe box to your tax preparer? Furthermore, being
organized also allows you to understand your business better. Business owner's with good bookkeeping records will
better know how to control costs.
2. Plan to do your bookkeeping at specific times, not just whenever you can get around to it. If you tell yourself that you
will do it every Monday morning and stick to it, you will not have to worry about that stack pilling up. We all know what
happens when the stack piles up, we decide to keep putting it off until its so large it takes several hours just to sort
through it.
3. Use a simple accounting/bookkeeping program that fits your business needs. For most businesses QuickBooks
Pro (R) is all you will need. However, QuickBooks (R) does offer some very dedicated programs for instance
QuickBooks Pro Contractor (R). Remember KISS (keep it simple stupid), do not go out and by a huge accounting
program that may be so complicated that you need to hire the programmer to explain the functions of the program
itself.
4. Probably the most important action a business owner can take is to hire a bookkeeper. Now we do not just say this
because we are in the business. We say this because your job is to be out there earning the money, making the
business grow. A bookkeeper on a part time or full time basis will allow business owner's to concentrate on doing just
that, making money! A good bookkeeper will even be able to tell you where they foresee some problems that as a
business owner you would overlook. This is known as the "my baby" problem. That is to say "I started this business
doing it this way and I am going to continue to do it that way!" This is one of the biggest reasons that 50% of small
businesses fail in the first five years.
