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Finances don’t have to be time-consuming and difficult. If you prepare for it ahead of time, you’ll find that it’s a lot more manageable than you think. Here are some tips to stay on top of your bookkeeping.
1. Create A Plan
“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail” – Benjamin Franklin.
When you’re trying to stay on top of your finances, start off by making a plan. Write down what days and what times you want to allocate to do nothing else but update your finances. If you don’t know where your finances currently are, and where you want your finances to be in the future, then it’s very difficult to run a successful business. If you observe anyone in a leadership position, the first thing they do when someone goes wrong is ask “Okay where are we now?“.
Once you have updated your finances in terms of expenses and income, work on deciding how you’ll be paying off any loans, credit cards, or upcoming expenses. Look for anything that could go wrong, and plan for it. Write out a separate plan on how you’ll be saving up for an emergency fund. The emergency fund is money that should be set aside in the very rare event that for some reason you can’t work at all but still have expenses.
2. Use the Tool That You Always Have with You
If you carry your phone, tablet, or laptop with you everywhere you go, then it would be the perfect tool to download a financing app/program on. Most financing software has an app or program for all the most popular operating systems and mobile devices so you should be able to use any device. Most of these apps even connect directly to a bank account or credit card and pull in transactions automatically so you can classify them as needed. The best part is that you don’t have to do anything after that since you can invite your bookkeeper or tax specialist to view this data so they can easily file your taxes.
3. Work With a Professional
A bookkeeping company or financial advisor can give you a heads-up well ahead of time based on your finances. They might shoot you an email or give you a call to let you know that your last January was actually not a profitable month even though your income/expense report shows that it was. They can help you identify the problem with your current system, and propose new methods or tools to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
4. Don’t Wait
When you receive an invoice or purchase something for your business/clients, enter it into your financing app or forward the receipt to your bookkeeper right away. Putting it off for later will mean you have more work trying to find the receipt, cause extra stress trying to enter many receipts at the same time later on, or it can even result in you forgetting about it altogether. Entering it right away also lets you budget better since your finances are up to date when it comes time to make decisions about spending.
5. Have a Budget
Without a budget and plan in place, the benefit of tracking your expenses and income because stunted. Take the time to write out a budget based on past spending so you know how much to allocate for business expenses like stationery, rent, bills, purchases, gas for travel, etc. Writing down the estimated cost for these things makes it really easy to get a more accurate estimate for future income so you can plan out the growth for your business. With an accurate estimate, you can plan for things such as new staff hiring, moving into a larger space, technology updates for staff, staff bonuses, vacation for yourself, etc.
If you already have an interior design business or are planning to start an interior design business in the near future, feel free to contact us and we can help you in whatever way we can. If you need a company to help with your bookkeeping and/or taxes, we can do that as well.
