Accounting Tips for Small Business Owners for the Ultimate Success

The year 2020 has rattled the whole world with the economic downturn, stock market crash, cumulative loss of global GDP and much more. It was more of a wild ride for small business owners like you to roll with the punches. During the outbreak of this pandemic, the accounting for small business owners witnessed a major shift.

Don’t worry! You are not alone. There are thousands of small business owners facing the downturn as you do. Even after the virus is tamed, we are sure that the world is not going to be the same again. 

And that’s why it is imperative to run with the current trends in accounting to keep your business afloat. Here are some curative accounting tips for small business owners that will get your business accounting up and running amidst the global pandemic.

New Ways of Accounting for Small Business Owners

Here are some surefire accounting tips for small business owners that will help them to stay at the top of their business.

Set the Stage for Remote Work 

The remote accounting trend is on the rise. Nearly half of the accounting firms have adopted work from home culture even before the global pandemic and quarantine gripped us. Now we can expect the numbers to hike significantly as businesses from coast to coast have evolved to new practices of conducting business remotely and encouraging accounting for small business owners in this way.

 So, you have to facilitate your accountant or bookkeeper with proper records and necessary accounting aids for the accounting-from-home landscape from your side to keep your books reconciled and taxes straight. If you have an in-house bookkeeper, outfit him with the right tools and adapt workflows and strategies to optimise the work from home. Remote accounting is not only on the rise but also on the stay. So get your gears armoured to run with the work from home accounting culture.

Migrate to Cloud-Based Accounting

Supplementing the previous argument, cloud technology is emerging as the most vital ingredient in accounting technology trends. Home accounting is powered by cloud software. To put it in simpler terms, cloud-based accounting is the accounting software that is hosted on a remote server. This is the most popular method of accounting for small business owners in the recent time.

With cloud-based accounting software, you can share access with your accountant then and there. By doing so, your accountant will have a keen look at your finance flow and suggest ways to prevent cash flow from cutting short at the end of the month. Or if you are a do-it-yourself accountant, you can keep tabs on your finances anywhere anytime with cloud accounting. You don’t have to rely upon an employee or computer system that you have in your office to instantly check your records. Apart from the ease of accessibility, weigh the other parameters of cloud accounting such as uptime, scalability and security before you make a purchase. 

Embrace Accounting Automation

The word automation sounds like a more sophisticated term for a majority of the crowd and so leaves it for big enterprises. But coming down to reality, automation is not only human-like robots, but it can be as simple as software that can perform repetitive grunt work. Now, this automation is ruling the accounting for small business owners.

As a small business owner, you already have a lot of things to do in the pipeline. Rather than indulging in redundant time-consuming and labour-intensive chores, you can divert them to automation software and focus more on things that really matter.

The most irksome job in accounting and bookkeeping is the manual entries. Most C-level accounting executives are itching their organisations to hop on to accounting automation trends. Manual keying has become obsolete in big enterprises and slowly fading out of existence among the small business crowd. There are tons of tools scattered on the web for accounting automation, but only a handful of them are truly reliable and effective. One such automation tool is PayTraQer, built to wipe off manual entries from your bookkeeping. It can seamlessly sync transactions from your payment system into QuickBooks. If you are a small business owner using QuickBooks, PayTraQer is a must-have supplement to run your accounting . An effective accounting tip for small business owners is to try any accounting automation software to manage the accounting system smoothly.

Such tools will have free trial packs. Give it a shot and explore its functionalities before you let it automate your bookkeeping.

Heighten the Cyber Security Walls

Marching to the cloud is a smart move, but make sure you tighten your cloud security. It is common to stay lethargic assuming cyber threats to be occurring only in larger enterprises. When hackers can breach the tough walls of high-profile companies, how long is it going to take them to creep into your records? 

Hackers often label small businesses as the soft target as you are more likely vulnerable to their threats. So,  don’t take chances on the stock of your company records. Your lethargy may cost you if the ordeal occurs during tax seasons. So, get grips on the cyber threat landscapes and educate your employees on cybersecurity. Always remind them that they are just one click away from the cyber attack and reinforce strong password and limited access policies for networks and buildings. And most importantly, have a sound backup  plan for managing the remote accounting. 

Get a Hand from Analytics and Forecasting Tools

Seize the advantage of technology and add more tools and applications to your accounting crew.  In today’s accounting industry trends, small businesses are likely to use forecasting, analytics and budgeting applications for better insights on their cash flow and making clearer decisions. 

Such tools will bring to light where your business had been, where it is now and where it should head. You will get reports on the financial and non-financial aspects of your business and pull up analytic reports with infographics and other visual scales. This gives you transparency, increased operational efficiency and deeper financial insights into your business and keeps you on track. 

Bottom Line

Taking everything into account, we may conclude that the world would be spinning with rapid changes each day. And the greatest lesson we learned from the year 2020 is to be prepared for the unexpected. So, get your gears updated to the modern era accounting tips for small business owners and techniques and stay in the know of Prevailing trends in accounting to keep your business running in this competitive market. Implement these accounting trends into your small business and get running.