Many business owners try to spend as little time in the accounting details as possible.  A simple solution to achieve this is to have good accounting practices in place.  Here are a few tips that will help you and your staff be more organized and ready at any given moment:

Daily Bookkeeping Tasks:

  1. Invoice your customers or clients as soon as the sale or service is complete.
  2. Make cash deposits every day as a routine; record both your cash and electronic payments in the proper journal section at the end of each day.
  3. Run a daily cash flow report in order to keep yourself informed and ready to make any needed actions.
  4. make sure that your data is backed up.

Weekly Bookkeeping Tasks:

  1. Schedule time on your calendar to ensure that your data entries and filing are complete and up-to-date.
  2. Run a weekly cash flow report as above.
  3. Run your accounts payable and accounts receivable reports and make sure that all bills are paid on time to protect your credit rating.  Check for any overdue accounts receivable and send a reminder to the client/customer, if necessary.

 Monthly Accounting Responsibilities:

  1. Send out monthly statements to clients/customers.  Add "reminder statements" for those that are overdue.
  2. Refine your collection policies to coordinate with your aged Accounts Receivable reports.
  3. Meet with your bookkeeper and/or accountant (even if those people are both you!) for your monthly financial review.
  4. Make sure you have a redundant back-up source for your financial files.

Quarterly Accounting Responsibilities

  1. Work with your accountant to prepare and file your quarterly taxes, depending on the requirements of your taxing jurisdiction.  We can help you determine that.
  2. File all reports on time for sales tax, employee payroll taxes, FICA, etc.  Timely filing will avoid late penalties and fines.
  3. If your company has inventory and equipment, complete an inventory of all relevant items.
  4. Do a test "restore" of your financial records from your data storage service.

Annual Accounting Responsibilities:

If you did all the above, this will be easy.  No more last minute rushing that will take away time from you running your business.  Trust us!
))))))