By Ashley Preen

July 28, 2019

Three tips to reduce your bookkeeping stress

Business leaders are always occupied in making big and small decisions about different areas of work. From deciding on the next five-year plan for a specific business segment to making sure that all the employees in your team are working in cohesion, a business leader’s job is never done. All these never-ending activities require strong support from efficient systems and processes, which can help reduce unnecessary bookkeeping stress and anxiety and can help you breathe a little easier.  

Bookkeeping is one of the essential functions of a business. Impeccable financials are the backbone of any business and enable leaders to make their businesses successful. Unsurprisingly revenues and profits are also one of the most significant stressors for any business leader. Small and medium-sized companies often find it infeasible to hire an expert financial manager for managing the finances for their business. But just because you cannot afford an expert doesn’t mean you cannot get top not bookkeeping services. Let’s look at some of the ways leaders can achieve financial success and profitable position for their companies while reducing their bookkeeping stress.  

1. Outsource your bookkeeping tasks to a professional accounting firm  

Professional accounting firms have experts who can help you navigate the accounts for your business in the best way possible. These firms don’t just keep track of your receivables and pay your bills but also provide you financial analysis, recommendations for cutting costs and advice on manoeuvring complex bureaucratic procedures. You will always stay on top of your taxes and will be updated with any new legislation or legal developments affecting your business. External accounting firms have expert finance professionals who are well trained and always at the top of new developments. This level of expertise is generally impossible or very costly to achieve in-house.  

expert finance professionals

Hiring an external accounting has many other advantages as well. You will have an additional set of eyes looking at your business financials at all times. You will never be late on your bills and taxes and will not have to play catch up on your accounting tasks. Even your existing employees will become more disciplined and productive as they will have streamlined processes and reporting lines in place, which will eliminate many types of inefficiencies from your business. You will also have strict internal controls in place to make sure that theft of any kind does not happen. All these benefits of an external accounting firm will provide an edge to your business.  

Moreover, some of these firms will also equip you with modern technologies such as Receipt Bank, which will allow you to simply snap or scan your invoices and bills and share it with your accounting firm without even arranging for the documents to be sent physically. Receipt Bank uses optical recognition technology and is also available a mobile app that can be used anytime and anywhere. It can also be linked with your emails and other accounts to automatically fetch and scan your bills to store information from them online. As your time will free up from these repetitive and administrative tasks, you will be able to focus more on what really matters for your business, and you will be able to make better business decisions in the presence of readily accessible and up to date financial information.  

2. Automate your receipts entry process  

Automate your receipts entry process

You are more than likely to use specialized accounting software for your business. However, to make sure that your bookkeeping stress is as minimal as possible, try to equip your accounting software with the latest technology available. One such development in this area is an automated receipts entry process offered by AutoEntry. Which is an advanced data extraction solution which allows users to snap or scan their financial receipts and send them to their accounting firms without the hassle of manual entries. The automated process enables companies to get rid of the complex organizing and storage of the physical documents and frees up physical space within their office, which can be utilized for many other valuable purposes.  

Solutions like AutoEntry also allow users to simply link their email or other accounts and automatically pull recurring bills and statements from them. This means that you will no longer have to remember forwarding your hundreds of repetitive monthly bills to your accounting company as AutoEntry will do it for you itself. It also allows you to grant access rights to your accounting firm so that they can manage your financials without having to reach out to you for every little information. All these services are also entirely secure and foolproof because the data that is saved from physical files is not changeable or editable. It can only be viewed and used for analysis and decision-making.  

3. Get an online storage service to get rid of hefty document files  

Handling an enormous number of files and folders, organizing them in ways such that they are always accessible and arranging them to make sure that they are portable is not an easy task and more than often requires additional resources. All these physical documents handling makes bookkeeping a very stressful activity for everyone regardless of their level of skills or expertise. Luckily, there are ways to eliminate the chaos of keeping heaps and piles of papers for recordkeeping. One such solution is Hubdoc.  

Storage

Hubdoc like Receipt Bank and AutoEntry is also a data extraction solution for invoices, financial statements, bills, receipts, and other documents. As soon as a document is snapped or scanned and shared to Hubdoc, it becomes a part of permanent cloud-based storage and is no longer required to be physically stored. The data extracted from physical files will always be accessible for critical business decisions and financial analysis. Hubdoc also allows you to make this data accessible to your colleagues, partners, and team-members for effective collaboration. Many times, data gets stuck in silos and is not available to all the parties in the accounting process leading to information gaps and delayed or wrong decisions. Using Hubdoc, you can be sure never to encounter such a problem.  

In addition to all the above benefits, online storage also frees up significant physical space, which can be utilized for other essential purposes. You can use the freed-up space to accommodate another employee or to fix another scanning machine, or you may just choose to leave it as it is but without all the clutter resulting from the piles of documents which thanks to Hubdoc are now safely stored as usable data on an online storage platform. Who wouldn’t appreciate an organised, clean office space free from useless clutter?  

The Bottom Line

Bookkeeping and accounting for your business do not always have to be stress-inducing, in fact, they can very well be the guiding light for other areas of your business. Outsourcing your accounting activities will reduce the burden on your shoulders and allow you to focus on the areas of the business that matter the most. Accountants and Tax advisors offer many economical packages for small and medium-sized companies. In addition, using automated technologies will free up your time and resources and getting online storage services will eliminate the hassle of handling large piles of physical files which will instead always be available for use online and will be easily accessible to whomever you choose to share them with.