Keeping on top of your bookkeeping can be a time consuming and stressful activity when you’re doing it yourself and running your business too. To break down the job title – ‘Bookkeeping’ is the practise of recording and tracking the financial transactions of a business. It can feel like a necessary evil. Just something you need to do to keep the HMRC powers-that-be happy.
Rather than a necessary evil, it is vital to the success of your business. To break down what it really means, keeping accurate books helps you to:
- Do the financial things you’re required to do for the business like prepare tax returns
- See how much money you have coming in and out of your business
- Create budgets so you can plan for upcoming opportunities (or avoid a devastating cash dip)
- Make decisions about your future based on the information you have about your business performance
- Feel like you’re in control of your business, not the other way round
Maintaining your books is necessary for achieving your business goals
There are two statements we know to be true for most business owners:
- You want to be in control of your business and its future, not feeling like it’s dragging you along for the ride
- You generally don’t need more stuff added to your plate
When your books are organised, and maintained regularly they are your means of control. You get a good picture of how the business is performing on a daily basis, which will help you make the decisions you need to make as a business owner.
You may want your business to see considerable growth, or you may just want to get it to a place where you’re comfortable – every business owner has different goals. But whatever your business and personal goals are, you’re going to need regular accurate bookkeeping to achieve them. It’ll be impossible to make plans for the future (short or long term) if you’re running your business blind day to day.
Are you making enough to take on an employee? Is a tax payment looming round the corner about to affect your cash flow? Do you have regular late payers throwing your payments out of whack every month? These are the kinds of questions you need timely financial information to answer.
BUT then we get to point 2. This is all well and good, but you’re on the ground with the troops. You’ve got processes to run, customers to keep happy and people to manage. You’d probably love to be spending your time in an overseeing capacity, pushing the business forward with the information at your fingertips. You can be! This is where bookkeeping support can be a business life saver.
You can do the bookkeeping yourself or you can enlist the support of a Bookkeeper to take the weight off
A Bookkeeper will support you by providing accurate and up to date financial information about your business, including:
- Recording financial transactions and balancing the books
- Reconciling your bank account, comparing it with your bookkeeping records for the same period, so you notice any discrepancies.
- Preparing monthly reports to summarise your business’s financial position
- Creating and sending invoices, and performing credit control (Accounts Receivable)
- Processing invoices from your suppliers (Accounts Payable)
- Handling your payroll calculations
- Preparing your tax returns
- Assisting with the creation of management reports such as the Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet.
At Starfish Accounting we have three dedicated Bookkeepers that can help simplify this process for you, giving you peace of mind your bookkeeping is in order and you’re ready for any tax returns or queries from HMRC.
The service itself is tailored to your needs, and the level of bookkeeping provided can range from an hour or two a quarter to cover the more complicated areas, to a full end-to-end service.
But from your side, all you need to do is upload your receipts and bills to Receipt Bank when you get them and we can do the rest. If we process your expenses, we can ensure that the correct VAT amount is reclaimed, and you aren’t missing any tax deductions you’re entitled to.
We can generally get this up and running for new clients within a couple of weeks, so you might get those Sunday evenings back sooner than you think.
Save yourself time and money in the long run
By having a weekly or monthly bookkeeping routine in place, queries can be dealt with promptly and you can avoid that last minute panic to hit a deadline.
Beyond that, having this accurate financial information provided for you means you’ll be in a position to budget accurately, look at how you can grow your business and make smart business decisions (without the stress of having to make time for it).
We’re fully aware this may be your first experience of having someone else take care of the bookkeeping for you, and you may hesitate on the cost of getting support. That’s okay – your concerns are valid, and here’s a great blog we wrote about how much it costs to work with us. We want you to understand how it all works, so you trust our process in coming up with a price to suit you.
When you think about it, we encourage you to consider the cost if you don’t get support. From experience, we know it can seem like the easiest option to do as much as you can yourself. But it will end up costing you more in the long run in time – which is your most valuable asset. Think about how you’re spending it now, and how you’d like to be spending it. If we can help you spend your time better, let’s talk about it.
