Recording or book-keeping is the foundation of any business, big or small, sole or limited. The book-keeping activity will keep a record of your financial affairs and moving on, will make auditing easier. This might sound like a task, but there is no escape because you would certainly not want to make your finances chaotic. You may however, hire a book-keeper or seek help from an accounting service to untangle yourself. These aids not only provide your business an edge in terms of sorting money matters, but they also do so at rational prices. San Francisco Accounting Services is an eminent book-keeping aid that you might want to consider for your business. Meanwhile, let us quickly roll over some basic book-keeping guidelines.
Maintain financial records: Whether or not you hire an accountant, you must ensure that you are making and maintaining the following records:
- Cash: you must document the cash inflow and outflow from all your bank accounts. Once you make it a regular practice, you will also be able to predict future patterns.
- Invoice files- sales and purchase: maintaining a separate bill file for all your sales and purchases, in chronological order, will help you manage credit and debit controls smoothly.
Purchase anything and everything against a receipt: Business and TAX investigations flow parallel therefore, make it a custom to keep note of every transaction through an invoice or a bill. Once you get habitual, you will realize it is more convenient to record events as they happen, rather than settling records for years together.
Do not merge business and personal expenses: No matter if you are a sole enterprise or a limited company, you should not spend your business money on your personal expenses. This process might leave you baffled initially, but maintaining separate bank accounts for your professional and personal expenses can put you at ease.
Scrutinize your account statements: We do trust our banks, after all they have been taking care of our money for long. But as a smart entrepreneur, you too should take out time to scan your monthly statements. Besides spotting any fraud or mistake from the bank’s end, this will also help you get an awareness on your expenses and control them, if need be. Various business related studies point out to successful businesses having great sense of credit control.
Manage time for regular book-keeping: A business not only needs your physical and mental abilities or skills, but also for it to flourish, you must invest time and perseverance. You are expected to efficiently manage time and divide your day in a manner, wherein you can assign time frames for various tasks. Dedicate one of these frames to book-keeping, either right after you begin your day or just before you end it. You might be comfortable with some other hour of the day, no worries! Just be sure of doing it with a fresh mind because you are likely to make mistakes otherwise. If your work routine does not permit you for everyday book-keeping, try indulging weekly, but do not procrastinate it further or you might lose track.
We cannot help but thank the impressive advancements in technology all this while. It is because of them that you now have the privilege of using numerous sophisticated and user friendly tools to track your business finances. Amidst this abundance you must smartly pick one and stick to it. Or otherwise, you can take a step further, research and finally land on a potent choice of accounting or book-keeping service. They of course will not put an end to your business responsibilities, as your indulgence is of utmost importance, but they will professionally handle your financial affairs giving your business a predominant lead.