When it comes to the health of your business, your bank account is only one piece of the puzzle. Though a glance at your balance during a quick trip to the ATM can be a sufficient pulse check for your personal finances, businesses are more complex than one balance can encapsulate. This is why it’s essential you keep your books as up-to-date and accurate as possible, and how Bookkeep can help.
Why bother? I see my account balance every day.
Monthly if not weekly bookkeeping can save you a world of pain. To use a recent example, you need financial statements for loans, which many business owners learned the hard way in applying for PPP loans last year. If your books aren’t current, bookkeepers charge high fees for catching up. In combination with delaying critical financial assistance, bookkeeping can literally make or break a business.
A less dramatic and more common scenario is that real-time bookkeeping will allow you to catch mistakes faster. An incorrect price in a POS system can bleed more money from a retail store than you realize. A restaurant’s bookkeeper will catch right away if a manager forgot to close out credit card processors if the books are up to date. And for online businesses, it’s hard to know if you’re charging enough for shipping if you don’t know what you’re actually paying for it or to keep track of other fees that could be bogging down your profits.
I can tell you from experience when all the numbers are reconciled in your books your profit is always less than you estimated in your head. Whether running a restaurant, retail establishment, or an ecommerce website, accurate books are the key to making informed financial decisions for your business, and your bank balance isn’t giving you the whole picture. Your restaurant’s account might reflect funds that are not yours, such as sales tax and tips on credit cards. Any business with employees won’t see payroll reflected in their account either, as it’s accrued and paid out later. Then there’s outstanding money owed to or by the business.
If it were easy, you’d already be doing it.
Taken together, these variables and unbooked liabilities paint a much more accurate picture of your financial health. But if compiling this holistic image were easy, you’d already be doing it.
Fortunately, Bookkeep can save you hours of nightmarish spreadsheeting by reconciling your books automatically for part of your business, the revenue side. Automating ecommerce bookkeeping by posting, for example, your Shopify or Square financials to QuickBooks Online allows you to track elements beyond gross sales to include refunds, returns, sales tax, and more. The credit card deposits for your brick-and-mortar store contain sales tax, gift card liability, and fees that we separate, so our QuickBooks Online app can keep you up to date in real-time. Daily summaries separate your income from your liabilities on the day these transactions occur.
Keeping your books accurate and up-to-date in real-time is not only preventative headache treatment for you and your company; it’s critical to having the information you need to grow your business. You wouldn’t try to solve a puzzle in the dark, so let Bookkeep show you what you’re working with.
