Last week we featured a guest post by David Dunne in which he outlined “Easy Accounting Tips For Small Businesses.” If you haven’t read it yet, definitely check it out as it contains helpful tips that are easy to implement right now. In this article we’ll talk about how software can help with bookkeeping to save you time.

Bookkeeping Each Week

Let’s face it: Bookkeeping can seem scary and time consuming, but only if you leave it all til the end of the year (or 48 hours before taxes are due.) If you wait until the end of the year, of course you’re going to need bookkeeping help.

LessAccounting helps you manage your finances regularly and without much thought. We automate a lot of the processes, such as bringing in your transactions directly from your banks, auto-categorizing expenses, and even sending out recurring invoices. If you only have 15 minutes a day for bookkeeping, here’s what to do on LessAccounting:

• Categorize any expenses that the app hasn’t categorized for you. We’re able to categorize about 35% of your expenses for you!
• Create invoices for services you’re working on. If you don’t invoice clients until after services are rendered, you should still at least create a draft to remind yourself that someone will eventually owe you money.
• Apply deposits to invoices as they come in. If you wait too long to do this, you might forget what deposits are for what invoices.

The hard part is using these tools on a consistent basis. Read Make Bookkeeping Tasks Easier With A Schedule and download calendar events of bookkeeping tasks.

Reconcile Petty Cash

Don’t forget to monitor your petty cash because its often small amounts that don’t seem that important. Over time, though, $20 here and there can certainly add up, and if you’re not keeping track of that money, you’ll be left wondering “Where did all that money go?” at the end of the year. LessAccounting makes it easy to track this money.

• Simply create a manual bank account named “Petty Cash.” Adjust the Starting Balance to be whatever amount you currently have in your petty cash stash.
• Expenses: Whenever you take money out, manually create an expense in the app to show how much you spent, when, and what for. You can even upload a picture of your receipt.
• Deposits: Whenever you add money to your petty cash, manually create a deposit in the app to show much you added and when. Write a note on the transaction if you need to remember where that money came from.

Keep Receipts & Post Business Expenses

We recommend you set up your bank, credit card and even PayPal accouts to auto-import your transactions into LessAccounting. This way, even if you neglect your bookkeeping for a bit, you’ll have data to work with once you pick it back up. If you don’t auto-import your data, you can manually bring it in by downloading your bank statements from your bank’s website and uploading it to our app. Whichever you decide, all of your expenses will be accounted for and staying on top of categorizing them will help you with deductions come tax time. As I mentioned before, you can also upload pictures of your receipts to your expenses.

Bank Reconcilations Help

Our bookkeeping software makes reconciling your accounts fast, particularly if you’re auto-importing your data. All you need to get started are your monthly paper bank statements. (Online copies like PDFs are fine too.) Bank recs are super easy, here’s how to do them.

You Might Not Need Bookkeeping Help

Maybe you’re overcomplicating your company’s bookkeeping. Bookkeeping doesn’t need to be a tough exercise, especially if you make use of all the tools available to you. Bookkeeping is something you do to know the health of your business. Tax prepartion is done at the end of the year, do not confuse the two completely different set of tasks. Read on Year End Tax Planning, Start Planning Now!

Bookkeeping Help

If you’re just ready to hire a bookkeeper, here’s who we recommend, tell them you want to use LessAccounting, duh.

• Did you know we have bookkeeping service?