Managing accounts and bookkeeping has come a long way from when it started. The idea of a paper receipt is almost redundant as nearly all transactions are done online. The job role has changed a lot in recent years, with more and more processes becoming automated. There are many ways to make your life easier and even do some of your bookkeeping yourself. This article will tell you everything you need to know about bookkeeping in the digital age.
Get The Right Software
Some huge advancements have been made in the last five years in accounting software. Gone are the days of clunky websites with terrible user interfaces and zero customization. Nowadays many processes are automatic, invoices and receipts can be uploaded and digitized in a way that just wasn’t possible 20 years ago. As mentioned in a review of Bench accounting software, these systems can save you so much time and money. With the right software behind you, staying on top of your books will never have seemed so easy.
Get Your Documents Online
One of the biggest improvements in bookkeeping in the digital age is the ease of being able to share files instantly. If you are a bookkeeping company or doing your book yourself, make sure you have everything online, in a shareable format. Many services, like Google’s business suite, are free to use and will work seamlessly for you and your clients. If you need someone to sign something, you can just put the file in a shared drive, they can open it up on their end, put their e-signature on it and re-upload it. This could take barely a minute, instead of having to post them a document, have them sign it and post it back. Even scanning signed documents can be a pain. Digitizing your whole companies documents is going to be one of the best ways to help your company in the digital age.
Manage Your Client Information
Often the way companies store information about their client’s transactions would be on a huge Excel spreadsheet. While Excel is a great tool, having large spreadsheets with thousands of rows of data can be difficult to deal with. Asides from being confusing, they can really slow your computer’s processing speed which is frustrating. Using an online service that stores all transactions and invoices separately and allows you to browse and compare them at your leisure will improve your bookkeeping. Often these websites will offer integrated graphics and analysis that will help you gain insights into your clients’ finances. Utilizing these services is going to make your life so much easier, whether you run your own bookkeeping business or you are doing it yourself.
Get Your Data Looking Fresh
The field of data analysis has boomed in the last ten years. With the increasing amount of data being collected and stored there is more and more demand for analysis to be done on it. Detailed data analysis should be an integral part of your bookkeeping. One of the most important parts would be performing time-series analysis on companies’ sales and profits. Luckily, you don’t need a degree in data science to be able to perform this kind of analysis. Many software companies have developed applications that allow you to do complex operations with no code used at all. With these types of analysis, it is important to present really clear and informative visuals so that clients can understand the data. A picture tells a thousand words and that is more true than ever with presenting data analysis. Getting your data to look fresh is an important aspect of bookkeeping in the digital age.
Automate Your Invoicing
Manually typing out and processing invoices take so much time and are a large part of the jobs in the payroll department. Again, there are loads of new services that will offer automated invoicing for all of your needs. Being able to have your invoices generated and sent automatically, with you filling in the minimum of information will speed up getting paid. This can be important for cash flow as having outstanding invoices could be a problem for smaller businesses. You could even automate late payment charges if a company decides to delay paying you. One of the best features to implement is recurring invoices for those services you provide monthly. Having these set up means you don’t have to constantly be running out a dozen of the same invoices at the end of the month. These end up becoming more like direct debits, which make the whole process a lot less painful.
Don’t Take Your Eye Off The Ball
With an increasing amount of traditional bookkeeping processes becoming automated and digitized, it can be easy to get complacent. Although in most instances, these processes becoming automatic makes them less prone to human error, things can still go wrong. If you aren’t checking up on the things that are being sent out then errors can end up being compounded and harder to undo. Computers are the solution in a lot of cases but they can also become a problem. Remembering not to take your eye off the ball is one of the most important aspects of bookkeeping in the digital age.
Tidy Books Make For A Tidy Life
Bookkeeping, on the whole, has become a lot easier in the digital age. The amount of concentration and accuracy that was needed in the past often surpassed the capabilities of the average human. That’s why accounting companies started in the first place and why they have continued to be popular. In the modern world, it is possible to do more of your bookkeeping yourself, and if you are a small company you might not need to hire someone to look after your finances. For many, however, it’s just another thing they don’t want to have to think about. The main things you need to know about bookkeeping in the digital age are; the importance of the right software, that you should get your documents online, you should manage your client information efficiently, you should provide detailed and beautiful data visualizations, automating your invoices and not taking your eye off the ball.
