Beyond Data Entry

It’s good you’ve invested in having someone (an employee or a contractor) dedicated to doing your routine entry of invoices and vendor payments. You’re too important to your business to do that stuff yourself.

Now that you aren’t seeing all the details, though, you might be finding it more difficult to make decisions about day-to-day operations and expenses.

Perhaps there’s another role you need to fill: someone to do your payroll, reconciliations and monthly financial statements. If you have a qualified, experienced person looking after these activities, they can help get your head out of the trees and help you see the forest… with valuable insight on how your business is doing. A good person in this role will notice concerning trends and bring them to your attention before they become a problem.

Where can you find such an experienced person? Ask me... or your accountant.

Don't Mix Business with Personal

Here are 3 reasons why keeping your personal and business finances separate will also help keep you and your business healthy.

Finding, tracking, posting, filing, and reconciling your bank, credit card, and PayPal accounts - paper and electronic - becomes much more onerous and time consuming. You'll often have to chase down personal statements and dig through old purses for receipts to explain debits and credits. If you wait too long, the disappearing ink will confound your efforts even more. All of these things are guaranteed to make you feel overwhelmed.

Accurate information about your expenses on a regular basis will help you make better business decisions, otherwise you're flying by the seat of your pants. When your business and personal finances are muddled, you won't have a clear picture until tax time. Once a year is not the only time you need to make decisions. Inaccurate information can cause insecurity and indecision, detrimental to small business success.

If you keep your finances separate, you'll also find tax season much less stressful. Since less stress is good for your health, keeping personal and business systems separate also contributes to a healthy lifestyle. The impact of "tax stress" can be more than you might think.

If you are already suffering from these accounting ailments, get in touch. Untangling messes is one of my specialties.