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.

5 Resolutions for Your Bookkeeping New Year

We all make promises to ourselves that in the New Year we will do things better. Here are 5 worthwhile activities that will make your accounting processes easier for yourself and your bookkeeper. These are all quick to implement or easy to stick to.

#1. Log all the important dates in your calendar.
This only takes a few minutes and might include dates for payroll input, Canada Revenue dates for HST filings, corporate income tax filings, and even personal income tax filings. Acting on these dates in a timely manner will keep your bookkeeper happy and ensure your books stay up to date!

#2. Book an appointment to see your accountant.
Do it now and meet soon. This will allow you to review how you did financially in 2016 and if there are any tax breaks you can take advantage of before filing your tax returns.

#3. If you are a person who lives with spreadsheets and tracks your expenses that way, STOP.
Get bookkeeping software to manage your revenue and expenses. Need help figuring out which application would work best for you? Please call me!

#4. Put a simple filing system in place and ditch the shoebox.
Does a box sit in the corner with receipts in it waiting to be sorted? Take just a little time to put an organized system in place - it will reduce your stress!

• In a file box or file drawer, place file folders labelled for each month of the new year. This way, your receipts will be sorted by month at the end of the year.
• If those receipts relate to bank statements or credit card statements, match them up as you go and staple them to the back of the statements. It's a great way to know if you are missing something!

#5. Finally, pay attention to your financial statements. They tell a huge story about how your business is doing. If you need help understanding these reports, give me a ring!

Did You Know Your Receipts are Disappearing?

As a business owner you are required by the Canada Revenue Agency to provide records of all the transactions of your business for 7 years. They must be kept in a secure and accessible place.

Ever notice those nasty receipts printed on thermal paper that fades after a few months? Well, CRA does not care; it is you that still needs to provide proof of that receipt. All those tricks you try that Google tells you about may not work well. So what can you do?

With technology the way it is today, we don't have any excuses. You need to decide what works best for you as an individual. There are many apps, both free and for a charge, that you can use on your smartphone. These apps will take a picture or scan of your receipt and keep it either in the cloud or downloaded to your computer. Some online accounting programs have a mobile app that lets you actually store the receipt and input the information related to the receipt directly into your bookkeeping software. One such program is Quickbooks.

I have experimented with a few of these apps - Neat, Expensify, and Receipt Scanner by Num Receipts Inc. - but I don't have a preference.

Don't have a smartphone that can provide you with access to these apps? No worries, there are lots of small receipt scanners out there that you can attached to your computer via bluetooth or USB.

If you have found a great tool that works for you, please share!