The double entry bookkeeping system was created in 15th Century Venice, and the Industrial Revolution made way for the first chartered accountants, but things have changed quite a lot in recent years. Now any business owner can manage their accounts easily with simple, but still quite snazzy, online tools. No mental maths required.
- All the boring stuff is automated.
Invoicing has to be done to bring that cash in, but the process of actually asking for payment can be a real hassle.
62% of freelancers are currently waiting for at least one overdue invoice, according to a study by Access Commercial Finance, and 54% already budget around late payments. When this carries on unchecked, it can mean some small businesses close down for good. The Federation of Small Businesses found 37% face cash flow problems, 30% dig into their overdraft to compensate, and 20% find their profit growth is grinding to a halt. And that’s all because of late payments.
Automated invoicing means less intervention from you, read receipts tell you who’s seen your invoice, and you don’t even have to lift a finger to chase them.
- You can take it anywhere.
All financial information is uploaded in real-time, constantly updated and protected in the cloud. If you need your tools to be accessible to multiple users in your business, this makes sure everyone’s up to date and looking at the right information.
- You can manage everything in one place.
Nothing drains your energy and time quite like jumping between devices and softwares to do basic daily stuff. Many of the best accounting tools are built to work seamlessly with other service and softwares, and sometimes data can be exported and used for all kinds of different, important functions.
The main system dashboard should be the centre of all this activity, showing you the most important top-level stats, what’s overdue, what’s coming up, and how healthy your cash flow is. Having all this information at a glance is really empowering for a business owner, and can help them make decisions about staffing, taking on new business, and putting cash into launching new products. Without this information, these decisions are made blind or with out of date facts.
- Super smart stats and reporting.
Pie charts, line graphs and percentages. They look fancy, but are they genuinely useful? When you can turn your business’ financial data into reports that translate into action, your accounting takes on another really important function.
Just because you run a business, doesn’t mean you’re automatically really comfortable with numbers and stats. Searching for funding or investment will mean you’ve got to shine a big, bright light on how profitable you are and what your current equity includes, so being able to pull this information without much effort or time spent is a massive bonus.
- It’s going to be essential for your taxes from 2019.
UK200 Group (an association of chartered accountants and legal brains) surveyed some small businesses and found 65% don’t use an accounting software that will help them with their tax obligations. HMRC is ‘Making Tax Digital’ from April 2019, and soon there’ll be brand new digital services available for filing income tax, VAT and Corporation Tax.
After Making Tax Digital launches, your business bank account transactions will be exported directly to your digital tax account so you don’t need to manually declare, you’ll be required to submit information once every quarter instead of annually, and this will be done automatically through your accounting tool. Now is the time to get familiar with online accounting if you haven’t already, because it’s going to be really important for the next tax year and beyond.
Solna is a smart invoicing tool that creates beautiful custom invoices, sends automated reminders, and even checks up on your customers’ credit scores. It’s free for a limited time, so sign up now.
in LND