Plain and Simple: Bright Business Insights July 2016 | Page 5

FORGET THE PENCIL AND LEDGER Unlocking Your Business’s Potential With QuickBooks It’s likely that bookkeeping is not your favorite job in the world, which may make it easy to for you to put it off as long as possible, perhaps even until year-end when it’s time prepare your tax return! Unfortunately, that’s no way to run a successful business. No matter what software you use for bookkeeping, it’s easy to become frustrated when you can’t get it to do what you need. It’s also a problem when you’re not able to get reports you depend on to help you run your business. Keeping up-to-date records and learning accounting software can be intimidating to a business owner who already has a lot on their plate. When used well, QuickBooks can help you avoid duplication of efforts. Many of the accounting entries are done behind the scenes in QuickBooks just by carrying out the day-to-day activities of your business. And it provides virtually unlimited reports to give you the information you need to make important business decisions. Below are some ways QuickBooks can help you spend less time doing bookkeeping and more time running your business: • Reconcile Accounts – Make sure to reconcile bank accounts, credit cards, loans, lines of credit and payroll liabilities on a consistent basis. This will ensure that you’re capturing all activity that should be posted to these accounts and that your balances in QuickBooks tie out to your bank statements, credit card statements, etc. • Customized Chart of Accounts – Your chart of accounts is all about your needs and should be customized to those specific needs. Don’t make the chart of accounts so complicated that the reports become meaningless. Make sure your chart of accounts speaks to you and provides you with valuable information that you can use to run your business. • Class Tracking – Classes are a way to track your data in a way that is meaningful to your business, such as by location or department. • Owner-Memorized Reports – Develop a custom set of reports you find particularly useful to run your business. You can create a list called “owner reports” and memorize important reports to that list to make them easily accessible. Control Cash Flow • • Invoice Customers – Create and send invoices in QuickBooks. When you have a customer that wants to give you money for products or services, the last thing you want to do is wait on sending them an invoice. Properly and timely invoicing of customers will decrease your accounts receivable and increase your cash flow. Manage Bills and Accounts Payable – Using the ‘enter bills’ and ‘pay bills’ functions in QuickBooks will help you stay on top of keeping your vendors paid and happy. Paying your bills directly through QuickBooks via online bill pay or printing checks will reduce unnecessary data entry and increase productivity. Financial Reporting Take advantage of the reporting that’s available in QuickBooks. Without running and analyzing financial reports, you aren’t using your bookkeeping system to allow your business to perform to its full capability. Your QuickBooks file should be a tool that you use to aid you in making key business decisions. Give me a call if you’d like to learn more about how QuickBooks can improve your accounting processes. by: Ben Froese CPA, Manager 545 N. Market St. Wooster, Ohio 44691 [phone] [email protected]