How to Optimize Your Accounting Process to Lower Overhead
When you're trying to keep things moving at your business, the amount of work you spend on accounting can steal your time from your most productive tasks, lowering your profitability and raising your overhead.
Here's a quick look at a few ways you can optimize your accounting process to get back to your most productive self.
Keep it separated
One of the most difficult things to figure out weeks or months after a project is which purchases are business related and which are personal. That's just one of the reasons why most business advisors and accountants will tell you to keep your business and personal finances separate to make the accounting process that much easier.
Get it organized
We've all done it. You know that receipt is somewhere in your office, truck or home, but locating it is a completely different matter. By setting up an organizational system for your income, expenses and other major accounts, and then sorting them in a specific fashion, it will be much easier to find the paperwork you need.
Digitize it
Most major tax and government agencies will now accept scanned or electronic copies of payments, receipts, statements, invoices and similar financial documentation. You can also tag each document with a range of different criteria, making it easier to find later on by simply entering a few keywords.
Understand the process
How does the accounting and revenue cycles work in your company? If you don't have a grasp of that, you need to get one. It's very hard to determine what your cash flow will look like without a solid grasp of what money is coming in or going out at what times.
Outsource it
Of course, the easiest way to free up time from accounting tasks is to not do it in the first place. That's not to say you should ignore it, however! Outsourcing your accounting gives you those lost hours back again.
By trying a few of these tips, you should see a solid return on the changes through spending less time on accounting and more time on your most productive areas. If you need additional ideas, help with the optimization process or want to outsource your accounting process entirely, AccountRely can help. Please feel free to contact us today to get started.
