Sunday, August 31, 2014

All About Small Business Bookkeeping Services

By Harriet Porter


As the owner of a small business, accounting may be quite difficult for you especially if you are not in the profession. Even for big corporations, making all those calculations accurate and up to date is a resource intensive and difficult task. Small business bookkeeping services should be done by a professional.

There are two main reasons why organizations do book keeping. Firstly, it is a legal requirement by the IRS that shows them the activities and performance of the business. Secondly, it is an opportunity for the firm owners to keep track of the performance of the firm as well as know what the future probably looks like. These records capture important information.

Revenues refer to how much is coming into the organization while expenses are what the start up consumes or incurs. These records can be kept in journals or a ledger. In journals, you enter the records pertaining receipts and expenses while a ledger keeps the records as credits for expenses while debits for revenues. Journals are used to make entries into ledger accounts. Ledger accounts should be updated on a daily basis.

Cash expenditures are records of transactions of expenses over a period of time such as a year. To maintain cash expenditure records, petty cash and reimbursable checks are used. Petty cash is used to make daily office purchases not in the budget. A well maintained inventory is important to avoid misplacement of goods or theft. Inventory records are characterized by date purchases, dates sold and sale numbers purchases prices and amount.

Accounts receivable and payable are used to keep track of your debts and credits. This will include data such as invoices, numbers and dates, amounts paid and due balances and also client information. Generation of payroll is a headache for most small organizations especially when it comes to taxes payable to the IRS. Hiring a book keeper will handle all this for you.

You may think that keeping all the financial information of your firm in your head is easier. Well, after all you it is a small business and your memory is really good and no expensive software to install. However, let us face it; when you have all the transactions on paper it makes everything easy. You are able to see how you are doing, even make future projections and plan ahead.

One trick to ensure that books are accurate is keep them separate from your personal finances. See your start up small as a separate identity. Create a separate bank account and also a separate credit card. When these two accounts are in the same place, you will forget which money is which and will definitely be a mess when it comes to taxation.

Many start ups fail when there is poor bookkeeping. Records are important to avert cash flow problems as well as legal battles. Bookkeepers help your business thrive by use of budgets and creating projections that enable you plan ahead. Bookkeepers will also offer expert advice in matters of taxation and payroll. Hiring one will give the opportunity to do your core business and have the professionals worry about keeping records.




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