A sure sign that you have evolved as a business owner is when you feel ready to take more of a broad overview approach rather than feeling as though you must handle every detail yourself. This includes accounting practices. While it can be difficult to let go and delegate or automate these tasks, it’s necessary to free up your time to pursue business growth. Below we highlight five ways you can benefit when you automate accounting.
Find a Better System for Recurring Invoices
When a customer owes the same amount month after month, it is not a good use of your time to send invoices by hand. Many cloud-based accounting programs will automatically send an invoice for you. Another option is to offer the customer a small discount for setting up automatic payments via a credit card or bank account.
A Digital Solution for Importing and Categorizing Expenses
Even though you know that you must do this task at least once a quarter, you may dread the idea of going through paper files so much that you put it off longer than you should. Most people would not find it enjoyable to sift through boxes of paper receipts to organize and categorize business expenses. A better solution is to use a software program that allows you to link your credit card or bank account and track expenses automatically as you go. This also makes tax time a much less stressful endeavor.
Give Customers the Option of Paying by Credit Card
FreshBooks, a top cloud-based accounting software program for small business owners, conducted a survey recently and determined that its clients receive payments twice as fast when they offered the option of charging the outstanding balance to a credit card. This is just one of many programs you can consider that makes it simple for your customers to pay their outstanding balance just by clicking on a link in the invoice.
Automate Accounting with Automatic Late Payment Notices
It’s awkward to call or send an email to a client reminding them that a payment is late. In fact, some business owners would rather allow the payments to go seriously delinquent than deal with the inevitable. This is another thing you can automate with a cloud-based accounting software program that sends late notices for you. Some programs will even calculate late fees based on parameters that you provide.
Speed the Process of Proposals and Estimates
Preparing estimates is a necessary part of the job if you want to continually attract new clients. It’s also extremely time-consuming. When you automate accounting and use a software program, all you need to do is enter a few numbers and hit send. It even comes with a professional template using your logo.
Need More Tips? Schedule a Meeting with a Doerhoff & Associates Today
These are just five simple steps you can take immediately to automate accounting and put more time back into your day. If you would like to go more in-depth with ideas for how to offload time-consuming tasks, schedule an appointment with Doerhoff & Associates. We know you can use all the help you can get to run your small business successfully, and we are here for you. We strive to provide what you really want and need – a unique and customized set of services to fill the gap and support you, the business owner.
