12 Jul How to make bookkeeping easy

Wouldn’t life be easier if you could wave a magic wand and the things you wanted to get done were magically completed? Hiring out any service for your business is kind of like that. You send over the information and voila, done! That is a route that many Rochon & Associates clients take because they are time strapped. If you want to give bookkeeping a go yourself, here are some tips you can use to make bookkeeping easy.

Start with a system

You may have heard us talk about this before, but you need to figure out the best system for your books. There are several decisions you need to make.

• Will you tackle your bookkeeping monthly or quarterly or yearly?
• Will you enter in receipts as you get them or after a certain amount of time?
• How will you track your expenses?
• When will you pay bills?
• Will you invoice clients in advance or after the work is completed?

Ask yourself what works best for your lifestyle. Also remember that certain businesses need to have information provided to clients and the CRA at allotted times by law to avoid fines or penalties. If you aren’t sure about this, we are happy to chat about your current situation.

Organize your receipts and bills

If you have a big box of receipts staring at you right now, you may be prone to big box syndrome. Big box syndrome means you toss every receipt into a box and avoid it like the plague until tax times comes back around. What if, you carved out one hour a week and organized your receipts. Then at the end of the month, quarter or year, all you need to do is input the information. Even better, carve out two hours a week, and your bookkeeping is always done and up to date.

Use a software program

An excel spreadsheet and a word document invoice template will get you far. A software program will make the more mundane tasks so simple and easy. Since this post is all about making bookkeeping easy, we highly recommend you read up on Quickbooks, Freshbooks, Wave, or other accounting software programs. They are super user-friendly. They are all cloud-based. And you don’t need to be sitting behind a computer to get the information out to your clients. All of these programs have very functional apps that you can access from your phone.

Some things in life are not enjoyable. If bookkeeping is that for you, these steps will hopefully make bookkeeping easier and more tolerable. If after you follow the steps above you find you are looking for that magic wand option, well, you know where to find us.