The new financial year is starting up in Australia, but proper bookkeeping is important no matter where your business is.
When it comes to organising financials for your business, we hear owners tell us all the time how they are going to become more disciplined with maintaining an order for their income and expenditures. By getting into a system of tracking and recording your transactions, you’ll save yourself time and headaches when the end of financial year arrives. You’ll already have everything you need to supply to the ATO.
Keeping your accounting in order must be an achievable goal, so we’ve highlighted a few points to get you started on getting your financials organised. What better time to start than a new financial year?
Use Dedicated Business Bank Accounts
Ensure that you set up a separate business bank account. Your personal bank account should be used purely for personal transactions. All business transactions should be made with your business account. Never mix the two. It’s a recipe for disaster.
Control Your Debtors
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Businesses often have clients who forget to pay their invoices on time, which opens up issues with cashflow for your business. It may result in you delaying making your payments, or having to hold off on additional purchases that may be an investment in the growth of your business. Either way, ensure you have a system in place to chase those who owe you money in a timely fashion. There are programs that can do this automatically, such as Debtor Daddy, Xero and Chaser, to save you time from chasing debtors manually.
Invest in Cloud-Based Bookkeeping Software
If you have an easy way of recording transactions, you’re more likely to stick to keeping your bookkeeping organised. Xero is online accounting software that offers a foolproof way of keeping up to date with all aspects of your business financials. This extremely user-friendly cloud-based program lets you access data from any device in any location. Now there’s no excuse not to keep on track–even if you’re away from the office!
Keep Your Receipts
One reason business owners dread getting started on bookkeeping is the challenge of finding receipts. Are they stored in a filing system? In your wallet? In a shoebox? Setting up a good system for storing your receipts saves so much time in the long run. And you won’t have to remember where that safe place was for that purchase you made months ago. Find a filing system that works for you. We recommend storing receipts digitally and saving them to the cloud. That way, there’s no chance of losing anything. Plus you can access from any location.
Outsource If It’s Beyond Your Expertise
Whilst all business owners have the good intentions of sticking to a well-thought-out system for their transactions, skill set and time are a couple of reasons why this doesn’t always go as planned. As a business owner, dedicate your time to growing your business, not tracking that purchase you made last year. You may also lack the expertise to ensure everything is completed as required for lodgement at the end of each quarter. Either way, engaging an external bookkeeping company who can work for you and your business is a good idea. The last thing you want to do it leave it until the tax man comes knocking.
By becoming more organised with your bookkeeping, you will save yourself time and money in the long run. Make time to devise a system that works for you. You’ll be glad you did when making lodgements and preparing your tax return is less stressful. Talk to Carbon’s team of bookkeepers if you need any help.
This is a sponsored post by Jamie Davison. The views expressed in this article are their own. To learn more about Jamie, visit our Specialist Panel.
image credit: Bigstock/tashatuvango
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