Tag Archives: quickbooks

Six Reasons To Use QuickBooks

Maximizing Your Business by Understanding Your Business with QuickBooks

Understanding your financial information is one of the keys to maximizing your business.  A lot of small business owners just know how their business is doing in their minds but as the business grows and their time is stretched, they often drift away from the earnings they once enjoyed or at least the earnings they could potentially have.  Utilizing an accounting program such as QuickBooks is a way for business owners to stay on top of profitability.  I hope to show you the benefits of using QuickBooks in your business.
Quickbooks_intuit_logo
The first key to maximizing profitability is to know the financial information of your business.  Relying on your tax return does not count because you get the information for the previous year in March or April.  By the time you review it some of your information is 15 months old.

 

You need to be reviewing your financial information on a monthly or at least quarterly basis to see what trends are going on in your business.  What if costs increased by 10-20% and your purchaser does not tell you.  You cannot afford to wait a year to find that information out.

 

In order to know your financial information, you need it in an accurate, usable format.  I recommend QuickBook, more specifically QuickBooks Online (the web-based version of the popular bookkeeping program).  Below are the 6 reasons I recommend QuickBooks:

 

1. User-Friendly:  It is important that a novice can understand how to input basic transactions.  A lot of business owners do not have accounting backgrounds and they need something they can understand and overall QuickBooks offers this.  In QuickBooks Online, you can input estimates, sales invoices, purchase orders, create checks and much more while your accountant has live access to reconcile your books.

 

2. Multi-Users:  This is why I prefer QuickBooks Online because it is easier to setup multiple users.  No need to have IT setup the program on the server, you can setup several users and grant certain access levels to individuals who may need to input sales orders but do not need to see the checking account.

 

3. Mobility:  Through QuickBooks Online, you can access from anywhere you have internet access, including a limited version on your phone.  This is important in today’s on-the-run work environment.

 

4. Most Popular: QuickBooks has around a 90% market share which means they are investing in improvements and have a suite for almost any small business.

 

5. Tracking: You are able to track a lot of useful information such as inventory, customer purchasing habits, costs related to a project, employee time on a job and much more.

 

6. Reporting:  At anytime you can print financial reports to include: income statement, balance sheet, Aging of Accounts Receivable, sales by item and much more.  These reports are customizable so that you can see sales trends by month for each product to know how much inventory to order for the next season.  Through reporting you can see trends in the business which is key early detection of a downturn.  Utilizing reports and tracking, you can turn the information into new strategies and thus new profits.

 

Once you select a program, whether QuickBooks or an other option, the important thing is to keep it accurate.  Many issues cause businesses to have incorrect entries which cause a host of problems.  Errors can sometimes be just as bad as not having the information, so I recommend having an accounting professional verify your work periodically.  It is good to give your accountant the file when they are preparing your taxes and ask them to make any correcting entries letting you know what they were.

 

With an accurate and up-to-date bookkeeping system, you can use it in helping you be more confident in making key decisions for your business.  We will look at various ways to utilize this information in your business in the future posts.

 

If you have questions regarding selecting a bookkeeping software or how to check if it is accurate, send me an email and I would be glad to answer any questions or talk with you about your specific issues.

Read the rest

Maximizing Your Business Through This Blog

How the SimpleBooks Blog Plans to Help Improve Your Business

The purpose of this blog post is to give you an idea of what to expect from my new blog and for you to tell me what you would like to see.  I will outline the types of blog posts that I plan to write and would like for you to respond on what things interest you and what things might not interest you.  This blog is not going to be about me but I want to offer help to you in the areas I am able.

9390582_m

Photo Copyright: kvkirillov / 123RF Stock Photo

I would like to start off telling you a little about myself.  I have worked in the financial industry for 10 years as a Commercial Banker after getting my Finance degree from a local college and my MBA from Auburn University (War Eagle!).  I have learned over the course of the last 10 years that my passion is helping small businesses maximize their business through understanding their own financial information.  In those 10 years I have encountered numerous small businesses who did not know where they where financially until their accountant did their tax returns.  These were solid businesses and their owners/mangers knew what they were doing but having, understanding, and using their financial information will help them maximize their business purpose.

For this reason I have started SimpleBooks LLC.  I hope through my bookkeeping/consulting business to help businesses excel.  I also want to provide free content to help businesses that I do not work with on a regular basis to also excel.  My goal is to help empower small businesses to maximize their profits through understanding their financials.

Now that you understand my goal, I will explain what I am planning on doing with this blog.  I will post at least once a week to provide you with information and training to help you maximize your business.  I have the following categories which I plan to rotate through.

1. Financial Training: Articles that outline how small businesses can utilize their financial information to improve profitability.  This will help you understand some of the basics of your financials to more complex ratios.  When we look at financial information, we are looking at historical information but understanding how your decisions affect your financials is key to increasing profitability.

2. Book Reviews: Once a month, I will review the latest book that I went through and how it was helpful to me.  This will not strictly be a financial book as the first one will be on marketing and the second that I am currently working on is about our personal energy levels.

3. Podcast: I plan to have a podcast going through various financial information to give those who would prefer an audio or video format over a written format.  The content will be similar to the financial training articles but a different format.  I am still in the planning stage so it may be a month or two before I am able to launch the podcasts.

As I mentioned, I want feedback from those who invest their time in reading and listening to the content I provide and therefore will adjust as you recommend.  Please leave comments below on what you like/don’t like about the concept of this blog and what else you would like to see.

Why subscribe to my blog when there are so many other blogs out there?  I agree that there are a lot of other great blogs, and I subscribe to a lot of them and understand that it is tough to take in all the great content on the internet.  But there is a need for us small business owners to focus more on the financial side of our business because ultimately that is how we make money.  This is often something that does not peak your attention which is precisely the reason why I created SimpleBooks LLC.  We can do all the data entry work for you and then meet with you to explain the financial information and we can have the interesting conversations of how your decisions will affect your profitability, advising you on different ideas to improve your business.  This blog is a free way to utilize some of our knowledge base to help you improve your profitability, and who doesn’t want to increase their profitability?

 Read the rest