Avoid Bookkeeping Disasters

Bookkeeping is a love-it-or-leave-it responsibility. If you don’t love doing your bookkeeping, you should probably leave it to a professional. If you do it because you feel you have no choice, it’s perhaps the least engaging, most tedious task of your day. It’s no wonder that small business owners cause so many potential bookkeeping disasters.

Failing to maintain and organize receipts

Some business owners are too busy to track and organize their receipts. If they never get it done, it sometimes leads to expense-guesstimating and number-fudging at tax time.

Of course, your receipt problem might not turn into a full-blown disaster. The Paperwork Reduction Act requires the IRS to “…minimize the paperwork burden…” They don’t want your receipts… unless they decide to audit you. Even if that doesn’t happen until several years from now, they’ll expect you to produce those long-lost receipts or pay taxes, penalties, and interest.

Mixing up your personal and business expenses

It’s easy to pull out the wrong credit or debit card when you’re in a hurry. Then there are those occasions when you intentionally use your business account because it has more available cash than your personal account. If you co-mingle your funds, you probably intend to sort it all out at the end of the day, or perhaps the end of the week. Sometimes, that just doesn’t happen. If you do this consistently, you’ll never know whether your business is making money or not, risking one of many bookkeeping disasters.

Thinking your App can do everything

Disasters happen when you start believing that an app is supposed to function as a professional bookkeeper. Bookkeeping apps are simple, inexpensive, and sometimes free. Developers build them so just about anybody can use them. Some business owners use them even when they shouldn’t.

Bookkeeping apps rarely perform without prompts. You have to know what you want and tailor the set-up to comply with your needs. If you don’t know what you want (a cash flow statement, an accounts receivable aging report), your App probably won’t give it to you.

Neglecting your employee’s records

When payday comes, your employees expect a paycheck and a paystub that shows their deductions and other essential details. They depend on W-2s at tax time so they can file their taxes and get timely refunds. If you fail to track the right hours, pay rates, dependents, and deductions, you may have an employee rebellion on your hands. If you don’t produce their tax records by January 31st, you might also owe penalties to the IRS.

Failing to secure your financial data

While some businesses secure their apps and software behind a firewall, others keep everything on an unsecured phone. If a cybercriminal accesses your data or downloads tracking software to your smartphone, they can access everything. This sometimes happens when you use a free app.

We help you avoid bookkeeping disasters

At Goode Bookkeeping and Consulting, we track your financial data so you can avoid bookkeeping disasters. Our professionals provide secure, virtual bookkeeping services at an economical price.

• Work remotely using innovative technology
• Set up your accounts and store your data on our secure cloud platform
• Merge your invoicing data and receipts to help you go paperless
• Automate your accounts payables and receivables
• Sync your data with your financial institution
• Produce financial reports on demand
• Give you 24/7 access to your financial data

Contact Goode Bookkeeping & Consulting

To learn more about our time-saving bookkeeping services, call us at (860) 968-2345 or complete our consultation form to schedule an appointment.