If you are running a small painting business, it is sometimes difficult to keep everything in order and avoid financial bookkeeping mistakes and traps. To organize your painting business properly, you need some bookkeeping knowledge to keep your business moving. A solid bookkeeping strategy helps you manage your taxes suitably, organize your bank accounts, manage your payrolls, etc.

In this article, we are going to learn about some bookkeeping tips a painting business owner needs to know to avoid financial mistakes and enhance the profitability of their business.

Bookkeeping For Painters: The Main Responsibilities

Bookkeeping is actually the backbone of a good painting business. Good bookkeepers can help a painting business understand their profit margins, know how much money they have in banks, and manage their taxes with high confidence. Apart from all of these, a list of bookkeeping responsibilities in a painting business can involve the following items:

These tasks are generally performed by bookkeepers on different time scales. Some tasks should be done on a daily basis, while others may need to be done once every month or even a year.

Organize Your Bank Accounts

You should always be sure that your painting business records are perfectly the same as what is actually in your bank accounts. For this purpose, you should manage your bank accounts

properly. Sometimes it is tempting to use your personal bank account for your painting business too, but it is always suggested that you keep your personal and business money separated.

This separation helps you manage your taxes more easily. Also, you will be able to report your expenses, track your earnings, and pay for the workers with ease. For example, you may sometimes need to estimate your gross profit to find out if you need to adjust your pricing; on these occasions, it will be much more challenging to track your expenses when your painting business expenses are blended with your personal grocery expenses.

Do Not Underestimate Invoicing

Invoicing is always a key element of running a healthy painting business. Sending invoices allows the bookkeepers to bill the customers fast for the work that has been done for them. You should try to manage the process of sending invoices efficiently, as the faster you send invoices to your customers, the sooner you can receive your money to cover expenses.

One good approach is to make the process electronic for speedier transactions. You should also make sure your payments support your financial goals, even if the funds are due within for example a month. You need to keep an eye on the cash flow constantly to maintain the healthy financial status of the painting business.

Record All Transactions

As a painting business bookkeeper, one of your major tasks is to record and classify every transaction that your business makes. You need to have confidence in knowing meticulously where the money is flowing toward your company bank accounts, and where this money is being used for.

It is very essential to compare the incomes and expenses to find out if everything matches together. You should report if the business is right on track going toward its financial goals and profitability. Knowing where your money is going and which transactions are recurring can help you find out what to cut down. Also, you will be able to find out if there is a leak of capital due to spending money in the wrong places. Therefore, you will be able to manage your budget more wisely.

Prepare For Taxes

Preparation for taxes is one of the most integral steps of bookkeeping and accounting for painters. You are going to have to report all of your incomes and expenses every year. Thus, it is highly critical to have detailed lists and documents in your painting business.

When the time of filing taxes arrives, small businesses that have organized books containing everything that is happening in the business can manage their taxes effortlessly. You will not need to search in hundreds of various folders, boxes, and documents every time.

Perform A Thorough Business Analysis

As a bookkeeper in a painting business, if you keep the books thoroughly organized, you will be able to perform a comprehensive analysis of your business’s financial status. Your meticulously-kept books can help you easily find out where the flow of money is coming from, and where it is leaving the business. This way, you can easily calculate the profit and loss of your painting business.

When you keep the books clean and vivid, you can decide if the road the business is taking is the right direction. It will be then easy to decide if the project that the business is working on is worth it and if you can expand it even further or cut it all the way down.

Use A Bookkeeping Service

Keeping track of all payments, purchases, payrolls, and any other bookkeeping tasks for a painting business is heavily time-consuming. It can take many hours to keep your books organized well. Sometimes, it can even get messier than expected and makes you stay away from the ultimate goal of providing high-quality services for your customers.

Hopefully, there is a lot of accounting and bookkeeping software on the market to make everything easier for painters. For example, you can use them to automatically generate and send invoices to your customers in a flash. The bookkeeping done-for-you service offered by Less Accounting enables the painters to save their time greatly by automating tons of bookkeeping tasks. It helps them avoid any possible tax mistakes and confusion.

Also, it is good to know that Less Accounting offers a simple accounting software too. You can benefit from both services at once to focus more deeply on your painting business, rather than worrying about myriad bookkeeping tasks. Taking advantage of Less Accounting’s service and software enhances the profitability of your painting business, as you can easily track your financial information, manage your taxes, generate reports, manage payrolls, stay organized, etc.