Whether you’re a startup, self-employed, a doctor, or a lawyer, or running a restaurant, you may wonder about the necessity of hiring a bookkeeping service, so as to how to begin. For survival and growth, your financial decisions are so important as your business idea. Bookkeeping helps small companies calculate risks and make better decisions through quick reporting.
And a practical software we at Stilz use for small business bookkeeping services is QuickBooks®, which brings a full picture by tracking your money in and out, shows your cash flow, and categorizes your expenses in an intuitive dashboard. At the end of the day, what matters is knowing if your business is being profitable.
But is an Excel spreadsheet not enough for a small business? It may be helpful to manage small volumes of data in the early stages but from the moment you need to track data along three months, six months, one year, or longer, Excel is not the most practical tool to manage massive streams of payments, for example.
Bookkeeping using QuickBooks®, there’s no math you have to do. It gives you the tools to handle payments fast, manage invoices, manage your sales, keep track of your expenses, all the tools to focus on your daily operations. QuickBooks® also gives you the benefits of asking your accountant, reconcile all your bank accounts, enter your bills, record your financial transactions.
How Does QuickBooks® Work for Bookkeeping?
QuickBooks® helps small businesses manage finances from desktop and mobile devices, enabling easy maintenance and automation of regular accounting tasks from everywhere with an internet connection. It can be purchased as a Software as a Service (SaaS) or as a standalone service. Paying a monthly fee is enough to start to organize the financial data, cheaper than buying desktop software.
As an online bookkeeping software, QuickBooks® takes care of the financial data entry and calculations, much faster than doing manually and without the need to entering every new information as managing a spreadsheet. Another advantage is the possibility to link your bank accounts and payment apps, including Paypal, automatically to a digital ledger.
When adopting accounting software, always pay attention to the requirements for the information management and edit your previous spreadsheet before you can import your files to the online system. If you are migrating from an Excel spreadsheet to online bookkeeping software, the best time to do so is at the end of the fiscal year, when reports are finished and necessary adjustments are made. Prep work before going online is recommended to get familiar with the new tools and the charts.
Finding a QuickBooks ProAdvisor®
A QuickBooks® ProAdvisor is an independent bookkeeper responsible for maintaining your financial data accurate and organized with customized functionality. Once appointed a QuickBooks® ProAdvisor, you will hand over to him all the accounting and bookkeeping responsibilities, and he can also assist you in installing and learning how to use the QuickBooks® accounting software when doubts come by. More details about the benefits of a QuickBooks ProAdvisor® we highlight in this article.
When searching for a ProAdvisor, we recommend you make a list of all the traits you are looking for in a QuickBooks® Bookkeeping accountant, explain the service you are looking for, your business needs, and your pain points with bookkeeping. Your bookkeeping needs may change depending on the regulations you need to follow but the basics you need to make sure of documenting are the receipts, invoices, bank statements, payroll records, tax returns, and investment statements.
Make sure about all the data you will need for audits or to present to investors to avoid any headache that hurrying up to organize messed up recordings would demand.
If you look for practical tips, take a look at the basic steps on how small businesses can do bookkeeping.