Photo Credit: Annie Spratt on Unsplash.com
Small businesses have to stay ahead of the curve to prepare for market trends, seasonal changes, fluctuations in volumes, customer demands, and so much more. Ask any business that produces or resells physical goods where their mind is right now. I can almost guarantee it’s well beyond summer, back-to-school, pumpkin-spice-latte season and probably beyond the holiday frenzy of November and December. Those business owners are already thinking about next year.
In the midst of all of that planning, are you taking care of your business books? Do you collect your receipts? Are they organized in any way? Perhaps you’re tracking your sales in a spreadsheet. Maybe you’ve moved into using a bookkeeping platform to track your business transactions. Regardless of your methods, are you up to date? When was the last time you reconciled those records against your bank statements?
It’s understandable if the answer is ‘not quite”, “almost”, or “I wish”. Administrative tasks are usually the first to slide down the priority list when business is booming.
Bookkeepers are often busiest from January to April each year when they are up to their eyeballs completing year-end financial statements and income tax summaries for their existing monthly clients. This limits how many “catch-up” clients they’re able to take on during peak season.
If you or your business could benefit from some assistance in catching up your business books and/or establishing new processes to lighten the load for the coming year, late summer or early fall is the best time to look into it.
Maybe you just need someone to help you refine your administrative to-do list into achievable steps and act as your taskmaster. Perhaps you just need an hour or two of training to make better use of your Quickbooks Online platform, but you can DIY it after that.
If you’re one of the many business owners with a sizeable bag of receipts tucked away in a closet or cupboard, a bookkeeper can teach you the easiest ways to sort that out and summarize the details. Often, what we need most is someone to give us actionable steps so the whole process doesn’t seem like climbing Mount Everest. We’ve got this!
The fine print:
The information and opinions expressed by Lori K Aitken on this blog are based on her own personal experiences. Please consult your own legal and accounting professionals for specifics regarding how any of the topics covered here may apply to your business’s unique structure, needs, or operational policies and procedures.
