Bookkeeping Issues….Do you have the Five?

Are you one of many small businesses that have trouble with the following:

1. Finding “time” and motivation to sit down and do your bookeeping in the first place?

2. You walk into your office to be welcomed by what once was a desk, but now just looks like something out of the muppets covered in piles of unopened mail, paperwork and more paperwork…..so you walk right on out again.

3. You have past due lodgements for both BAS and PAYG

4. You have no system in place to keep track of receipts, statements and invoices. They are scattered in numerous areas like the car glove compartment, your bag, the office desk etc……

5. You are a sub-contractor and never submitted a tax return since you started out on your own. You figure what the ATO doesn’t know, can’t hurt you.

Do you have one or all of the above, I wonder?

I DON’T HAVE THE TIME!

You are not alone here, every small business owner echos your pain and frustration.

You will be happy to hear that for as little as one hour a week, you can be on top of your bookkeeping. How I hear you ask?

Online solutions today are not only convenient, but will give your company a highly professional edge!

Myob has a wonderful product called “Myob Essentials” which is flexible, convenient and reliable.

You can access the programme “in the cloud” on your tablet, smartphone or laptop.

They have bankfeeds into this programme which reduces the time required to do bank reconcilations at the end of each month.

You type in your expense and myob liveaccounts will automatically allocate the expense to your bank transactions. Simple!

You can also invoice your clients on the go via email.

From $35.00 month Myob live accounts will backup your data, invoice, payroll and perform a quarterly BAS statement.

There are heaps of programmes out there like Xero, Intuit (Quickbooks), Freshbooks, Zoho and Cashflow.

The trick is finding the right software for YOU!

PAPERWORK, PAPERWORK 

Let’s face it, paperwork is a necessary evil of business life.

There are a number of tools to make life much easier in the way of paperwork that you can use. In the end, you just need to SUCK IT UP and DO IT!

Buy a filing cabinet and start the process of filing your paperwork away as it comes in!

The trick of the matter is to do a little every day, 15 minutes even.

You will be amazed at how much can be accomplished over a month!

BAS AND PAYG NEEDS TO BE LODGED

Have you ever added up the time you have spent worrying about NOT lodging your BAS or PAYG?

Have you added up the fines and interest? No/Yes?

If you are behind, why are you just worrying about it?

A) Stop procrastinating and do it

B) Give the work over to a bookkeeper to set up the accounts, show you how to do it

C) Employ a bookkeeper to do it for you.

What about the cost?

I cannot afford a bookkeeper!

I am going to disagree with you.

By the time you pay the fines, fees, your accountant’s $290 per hour and the interest from the ATO THAT money could have paid to have a bookkeeper catch up and do it for you. Point blank.

A SYSTEM AS EASY AS A, B & C

FREE TOOLS – Evernote and Dropbox

Evernote has a wealth of capablities that cost you nothing. You can save your notes, emails, webpages and even contacts.

Dropbox – upload the app on your phone or save it on your desktop.

As you purchase an item photograph and file it in Dropbox so that you never loose a receipt again.

XERO even allows you to upload an app on your iphone or android. Here you can photograph and save it on Xero itself to link to your bank reconcilation or expense later. (see:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6wM5QJhVus )

I liken your not keeping your receipts in order to claim against your tax the same as this:

Take a $100 note out of your wallet/purse

Grab a lighter

Burn it

Then repeat the action again, and again.

What was your excuse?

NEVER LODGED A TAX RETURN

Do you think that you will be able to dodge the ATO forever?

PAYG Annual Reports will be putting an end to that in the near term. If you are earning money as a contractor with other businesses, they are now required to lodge the details for the Gross amount, GST amount on this annual report.

Information like your name / business name / ABN, Contact number and total amounts earnt will all be imput into the ATO’s system.

If you have not lodged a tax return OR declared your income, the ATO are going to know! It’s a matter of “when” they find you.

Best practise is to organise all your files NOW and either hand them to your accountant or negotiate an amount for a bookkeeper to record it all. The sooner YOU approach the ATO, the better.

If you would like to know more, please leave a comment below or pop over to my facebook page [www.facebook.com/Myofficebooks ]

If you would like to suggest another topic, please feel free to tell me below 🙂

I NEED YOUR HELP TO SET UP A ONLINE BOOKKEEPING SYSTEM

Our team here at My Office Books would be happy to assist you in setting up your accounting system and training.

Message us via at SAY HELLO to find out more or like up on Facebook.

Amanda Hoffmann

Amanda Hoffmann is a registered Tax Practitioner / BAS Agent No.18613005, Associate of Finance, Xero, Myob & Quickbooks Proadvisor / Trainer and a Consultant for the Australian Taxation Office.

She says she is more than just a bookkeeper with experience in real estate investing, social media, podcasting, blogging and recently recording monthly youtube episodes

Amanda loves to teach smart, easy online cloud solutions and fix messy bookkeeping. Follow her on social media and say “Hi”