Want to make the preparation of your annual accounts by your accountant smooth and seamless? Save time and money — and avoid headaches at year-end — by following some simple rules during the year. To avoid business accounting headaches, simplify your daily business accounting processes. Here are three tips : 1. Get bookkeeping help you’re really wrestling with processing your business records daily, then get professional help.The investment in a qualified bookkeeper will save you thousands of dollars in the long run. I have seen too many clients who really have no bookkeeping experience take on the task of processing their financial accounts — only to find that it is a complete mess by the time it goes to their accountant at year-end. The headaches that are created include bank accounts not reconciled, account balances that do not agree, and transactions that are in the wrong areas in the financial accounts. This all takes time and money for your accountant to fix up for you. So save some money in the long-term by getting professional bookkeeping help if you feel that business accounting is not your strength. 2. Invest in MYOB accounting software The MYOB (Mind Your Own Business) accounting software is a system of accounting software solutions designed to offer you the ability of handling your business accounts just like how professionals do. The MYOB offers businesses with many advantages that will allow them to handle finance of their business without much hassle and complication. This is software specifically designed so that business owners such as you can take advantage of a wide range of accounting advantages. 3.Back up your data I have lost count of the number of business clients who have asked me if I have a back-up of their accounting data file. Not backing up is a cardinal sin, and no amount of paracetamol will solve this headache if you lose the data file on your hard drive and have no external back-up. You will have to go back weeks — and possibly months — and re-enter data if this is the case. I recommend you back up your accounting data file daily onto your hard-drive, as well as a separate external drive. External hard drives are cost effective and are a good external back-up source if your computer hard drive fails. Ignore this tip at your own peril, as I have seen many clients who have lost an entire year’s worth of data simply because they did not have a back-up regime for their accounting data. Of course, if you use cloud storage ( eg. dropbox) , you don’t need to worry about daily accounting back-ups, as the cloud automatically stores data in a safe and secure location. The goal is for your business accounting to be efficient, seamless and without grief. Accounting fees can spiral, and you will create headaches for yourself and your accountant if you don’t look at ways to efficiently and effectively process your accounting data so that it is correct the first time, every time.
