If you’re like many small businesses, you’ve probably gotten creative in response to the economic hardship caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. You may be finding ways to reduce your expenses out of absolute necessity – not simply because it increases your profits.

Accounting software can help you save money in ways you might not have considered. By switching from a paper to an automated system, your business can:

1. Reduce errors

When you use software like QuickBooks, your accounting accuracy improves dramatically. Because all of your records and transactions are organized and easy to access, you’re far less likely to make mistakes that can lead to supplier late fees, tax penalties, and even lost customers.

2. Budget wisely

You know you should have a budget, but it can be hard to predict your income and expenses – especially these days. QuickBooks comes with specialized tools that can help you finally complete this challenging task. You could even start with your current income and expenses and build a budget based on this real-life data. When you’re deciding where to spend your money, you’re less likely to make a purchase that will force you to cut back elsewhere. A budget guides you in making important spending decisions.

3. Track your inventory

You’re probably familiar with the problems that poorly managed stock can cause. If you’ve ordered too much of an item that isn’t selling, you have too much money tied up in unsold inventory. On the other hand, if you’re not reordering in time to fulfill all of your orders, you lose sales. When you automate your inventory management, you can tell at a glance where you stand with your stock.

4. Simplify your payroll

When you lose time, you lose money, and there’s no other accounting task that can eat up more hours than payroll. When you automate this process, you enter information about your employee and contractor compensation, payroll tax requirements, and benefits – once. All you have to do in preparation for each payday is enter the hours worked and make any necessary adjustments for items such as miscellaneous deductions and reimbursements. Payroll software handles all of the complex calculations for payroll taxes and retirement plan benefits. It can even submit your payroll tax deposits and tax filings on time, automatically.

5. Run pre-built reports

How long would it take you to create an accounts receivable aging report or a profit and loss statement based on your paper records? This is difficult and time-consuming to accomplish, even in Excel or Google Sheets. QuickBooks comes with dozens of pre-designed templates for real-time reports that provide detailed breakdowns of your revenue and spending. You just open a report, change the dates, and add any other desired filters, and the report appears.

No business wants to spend more than it has to on its operational costs, and accounting is clearly an area where you can save money by automating. If you don’t know where to start, contact us. We can get you set up with accounting software and provide training and ongoing support.

Estimates aren’t just for car repair shops or HVAC technicians. You may want to present them to customers if your company does projects that: 

• Don’t have firm price tags 
• Consist of multiple parts, like hourly work and materials 
• Are likely to be expensive 

You can create estimates in Microsoft Word or in accounting software like QuickBooks. The latter is preferable for many reasons. For one thing, you already have customer, product, and service information stored there. You can also convert estimates to invoices in one click. Whichever method you choose, you’ll be more likely to have your estimate approved if you adhere to a few guidelines. 

Create a checklist for yourself ahead of time.

Don’t just fill out an estimate form. Go over each step of the project in writing first. You undoubtedly have price lists for hourly work and supplies, but there may be additional charges. If multiple people will be contributing, you’ll need to build a timeline so you can promise a realistic delivery date. 

Be precise. 

“Precise estimate” may sound like an oxymoron. After all, you’re not absolutely certain what the final total will be. But spell out every element of the project with hour/cost totals. Be sure you include things like setup, corrections, and color/part changes.  

Build-in early notifications of cost overruns. 

Track costs carefully as you go. If you get partway through the project and realize that expenses are growing beyond the estimate, notify the customer before proceeding. You could specify a percentage (i.e., early warning if costs exceed a 5 percent increase).  

This guarantee should be spelled out in your estimate. It will ease some of the apprehension your customer might have about approving the expenditure. 

Make your estimate visually appealing. 

Handwritten thank-you notes can be appropriate in some business situations, but not handwritten estimates. Paper and electronic forms you send to customers should be polished and professional-looking 

QuickBooks allows you to customize your estimates. You can insert your company’s logo, add or remove fields (even inserting a Due Date field), and modify the design (fonts, colors, etc.).  

Build-in a follow-up date.

The process of having an estimate accepted may require multiple interactions with the customer. Don’t just send it and hope for the best. You might personalize the actual form with a handwritten note if you’re snail-mailing it or an additional email if you send it electronically. Tell the recipient to expect a call or visit by a specific date to discuss your proposal. You could consider adding a modest discount if an estimate is accepted by a certain date. 

These suggestions may seem like overkill if you’re simply proposing to build a website or do a minor car repair. But the more complex the project, the more effort you should put into your estimate. 

Our accounting specialists can help you with sales forms and anything else you’re struggling with in QuickBooks.  Contact us to set up a consultation. 

Before your new business even makes its first sale, you need to know how you’re going to meet your accounting needs. You should select a system that will suit you in the early days of your venture and will also allow you to handle growth. 

You have a few options. Some small businesses take the most familiar path: manual bookkeeping. You can do much of what’s required using Microsoft Office applications, primarily Word (for invoices, receipts, promotional materials, etc.), Excel (for reports and customer lists), and Outlook (for email and scheduling). 

There’s a big problem associated with that method: It doesn’t provide tools for recording and automatically tracking sales and expenses. You might be able to cobble together such a system in Excel, but you would probably find that task even more difficult than designing a report.  

Further, finding specific data, like a payment or a bill, can take a long time. So can matching a payment with an order or reconciling accounts. As your business grows, you’re likely to find that you’re spending so much time on your accounting chores that you’re not planning and managing and creating.  

Software Can Help 

These drawbacks have prompted many small businesses to invest in accounting software. QuickBooks is the most popular; it was designed to be used by small business people who have little or no experience with financial bookkeeping. Using QuickBooks, you can connect to your online accounts (checking, credit cards, etc.) and import transactions so you don’t have to wait for a statement. 

The software allows you to create and email sales and purchase forms, record and manage incoming payments and outgoing bills, and generate dozens of reports by simply choosing one of the templates provided and letting QuickBooks fill it with your own company’s data. All of your customer and vendor data is stored neatly in records, and you can find the smallest detail anywhere in the system in seconds by using the software’s search tools. 

There are other advantages over manual bookkeeping. You save time. All of your financial data is in one place. You’re more likely to stay current with your accounts receivable and payable. And, your accounting records can be easily backed up off-site. 

Getting Expert Assistance 

As transformative as QuickBooks can be, some small businesses still struggle with its operations and the time it takes to maintain their financial books. Even those that don’t face a bigger problem: understanding what this neatly-organized data means for their future. How can they make better decisions based on an analysis of it? 

We can help in both areas. Our accounting specialists can help you get started with QuickBooks and use it more efficiently. We can even take over the accounting tasks that vex you and eat up the time you need for more pressing managerial responsibilities. Our team stands ready to meet with you and determine where it can fit in to lighten your load and provide expert insight on your finances. Contact us, and we’ll schedule a consultation. 

QuickBooks was designed to appeal to millions of small businesses – different as they are. To make that possible, the software was also designed to be as customizable as possible, while still following the rules of standard accounting practices.

If you have left QuickBooks as it was when you purchased it, you may have found it wanting in some areas. Or, you might be bothered by features and options you don’t need. Here’s a brief overview of how to solve some of those problems.

Customize the Icon Bar. Set up QuickBooks’ Icon Bar to make it appear where you want it and contain the tools you access most often. Open the View menu to move it from the left to the top (or hide it completely). Click Customize Icon Bar in the same menu to add, edit, delete, or reorder navigational icons.

Modify your Preferences. This one will take a while. Open the Edit menu and select Preferences. Click on the titles in the left vertical list to see what your options are in each area. If you are the software’s administrator, you can work in the Company Preferences tab to, for example, turn on or off features like class tracking, inventory and purchase orders, and time-tracking. Click on My Preferences to see what your individual options are.

Explore the Lists menu. In this menu, you can see the different types of lists that you will be maintaining. They aren’t all mandatory. You will be building some of them as you go (like the Item List, which will grow as you create records for your products and services).  You may discover some features that are unfamiliar to you, like the Price Level List and the Fixed Asset Item List. Let us know if you want to work with some of these but aren’t sure how.

Tailor QuickBooks’ forms to better fit your company. Depending on what version of QuickBooks you are using, you have probably seen icons in the different toolbars and menus that represent actions like Manage Templates, Customize Design, and Customize Data Layout. These all refer to your ability to change the look and content of customer and vendor forms like invoices, sales receipts, and purchase orders. For example, you can remove or rename fields, add logos, as well as select different background, fonts, and colors, etc.

Check your version of QuickBooks. The most current editions have the year 2020 in the title. Are you a few versions back? Upgrading may be the solution to software problems you are encountering. Or, you may be using Pro when you really need Premier – or even Enterprise.

We can help you get the most out of QuickBooks by assisting with a number of tasks, including:

• Installation and setup.
• Customization.
• Everyday workflow.
• General financial management.

Contact us to set up a consultation, and we’ll work with you on any element of QuickBooks—or accounting in general—that’s giving you trouble.