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Money-Saving Accounting Tasks That You Don’t Need to Outsource

Most small business owners fear the term ‘accounting’ and run from anything considered ‘bookkeeping.’ While outsourcing your accounting needs is beneficial to your company, it also costs money. The key here is limiting the amount of work you need to outsource with the right accounting tips.

How do you do that, exactly?

You take some of the easier responsibilities for yourself and leave the more difficult accounting tasks for the professionals. Don’t worry, the accounting tasks you take on won’t take any special skills and won’t be time-consuming.

They will, however, be money-saving and that’s what’s most important.

Today, we’re going to discuss five of the simplest and easiest-to-manage accounting tasks small business owners should learn to take care of themselves. With the right software and accounting tips, these tasks will be as easy as checking your social media.

1.  Invoicing

Microsoft Excel is an amazing tool that can provide a wide range of benefits to any business -- including managing and recording invoices. Unfortunately, using Excel puts you at risk of constant data entry errors, wrong dates, incorrect amounts, and more.

Of course, this all leads to a delay in receiving payment from the client or customer, which is what no small business owner wants.

Avoiding this requires the right accounting software and accounting tips to help you not only automate your invoicing, but allow you to easily and quickly preview an invoice before being sent. This makes it much for manageable for any busy small business owner.

In addition to that, accounting software can help you change currency for each client, accept deposits up-front for work you just signed a contract for, receive notifications about overdue invoices, allowing the ability to duplicate past invoices for easy editing, and much more.

2.  Accepting & Recording Payments

Getting the invoice to the client is essential, but making sure they have the resources to quickly and easily pay that invoice is just as important. It’ll put a smile on your face when you see clients and customers paying you in a timely manner.

The right accounting software helps you not only keep track of who paid you, but also how they paid, whether the payment was cleared, when it was sent, when it was paid, and just about anything else you’ll need to track when it comes to accepting and recording payments.

The right software also saves you time by giving you an all-in-one solution when depositing checks, handling payments that bounce, and even helping you with foreign currency exchange when dealing with customers overseas.

In terms of accepting payments, you can integrate an easy option built into the invoice. That way the client can pay that invoice the moment they receive it with little work on their end. You can set it up so the money is deposited directly into your business bank account.

In terms of recording everything, a majority of data is recorded automatically to make it easier on the business owner. It’ll keep everything under the same roof so you can easily manage future, current, past, and overdue invoices.

3.  Expenses

When it comes to accounting tasks, managing income isn’t so bad when watching your business grow and receive payments. Unfortunately, things aren’t as fun when managing the money your business is losing -- but they’re just as crucial to the process.

When using a spreadsheet, tracking expenses is difficult and leaves your business prone to mistakes. With the right software and small business accounting tips, you can connect your business bank account directly to the software. That way all your expenses are automatically uploaded to the software every single day.

It’ll make keeping track of expenses a lot easier because you’ll only have to add in the cash expenses, which don’t happen as often in business. Simply snap a picture of the receipt, add in what it was for and how much, and save the entry. You can always label them to further organize, as well.

Accounting software can also help you manage tax deductibles, including meals, business travel, vehicle-related costs, home office expenses, and technology costs.

4.  Sales Tax

Collecting sales tax helps cover tax costs for any small business owner, but most neglect the process of recording and keeping track of the sales tax collected over the past year. This leads to the sales tax being added into your income and used with your spending money.

Of course, a nightmare is bound to happen when you don’t have the funds to cover tax payments. To avoid this from happening, it’s important to manage sales tax collections and keep them separate from everything else you’re receiving.

You’ll always have access to your data and can easily manage how much you’ll owe in sales tax whenever you need to.

5.  Financial Knowledge

When running a business, it’s essential you understand where your business stands financially at all times. You need to know how much cash flow you have, how much money is coming in, how much is leaving, and knowing what the future has in store for you.

Most business owners wait to take care of all these things at month’s end, but that leaves you prone to rushing and making mistakes. Having a software that keeps everything right in front of you throughout the month allows you to stay on top of where your business stands whenever and wherever.

Financial reports should be easy to run and easy to read, they shouldn’t add more frustration to your situation. When choosing a software that’s right for your company, take this into consideration to avoid making the wrong investment.

Once you start to turn these small business accounting tips into habits, you put your business in a much better position moving forward. You’ll have the confidence you need to grow your company and inspire your employees to do better every day.

Tips For Preventing Payroll Fraud

While businesses are affected externally due to the global pandemic and economic crisis, another enemy lurks within: Payroll fraud. It is a crisis that continues to rear its ugly head in and cripple businesses, big or small.

In this article, we’ll explore what payroll fraud is, its forms, and preventive measure you can implement to minimize the risk of being defrauded in your business.

What is Payroll Fraud?

Payroll fraud is a type of accounting fraud perpetrated by employees (or even employers) of an organization who exploits the excesses of a payroll system to enrich themselves. This typically results in workers falsifying their timesheets or any other forms of deceit to receive payments for hours not worked.

In the case of an employer or supervisor, payroll fraud could mean withholding deserving payment of a worker’s wage. According to a report, payroll fraud happens in 27% of all businesses, and twice as much in businesses with a staff size of fewer than 100 workers.

Types of Payroll Fraud.

Payroll fraud manifests in different forms in businesses. They include:

1. Padding working hours.

This is one of the most common types of payroll fraud. This typically occurs when an employee with ill intentions falsify the hours worked on their time sheets so as to get greater pay for less work. In some cases, a worker may clock in hours for a co-worker that isn’t present. This practice thrives in businesses when the line manager isn’t closely monitoring the time sheets. 

2. Pay rate alterations.

This is another deceitful practice that is occurring in most businesses today. Here, a worker (or group of workers) connives with the accountant or payroll supervisor to illegally increase the amount of their monthly or hourly pay. This happens days before payday and is reverted to the original rate shortly after payment.

3. Outstanding advances.

This type of payroll fraud involves a worker demanding an advance payment and doesn’t pay back even after their regular payment has been paid. This fraud can only work when the payroll supervisor changes this advance fee to company expenses and will not be detected.

4. Workers misclassification.

This type of payroll fraud is facilitated by an employer. Workers in an organization are classified as either employees or independent contractors. Recruiters sometimes make the mistake of misclassifying their workers. But some are done intentionally in a bid to evade payroll and unemployment taxes.

How to Prevent Payroll Fraud.

Now that you’ve learned what this fraud is and how it can be perpetuated in businesses, how can you as an employer prevent it?

1. Designate different duties to different employees.

Payroll fraud typically thrives when a worker is responsible for multiple duties in the same department. For instance, if a worker is in charge of processing payroll and writing payroll reports, fraudulent activities may go undetected. You can mitigate payroll fraud by assigning different duties to different workers.

2. Critically review payroll reports.

Another payroll fraud prevention tip is to critically review payroll reports from the payroll manager before signing off on it. Payroll frauds may thrive in a business when the pay reports are not properly analyzed for errors.

3. Monitor canceled checks.

Another way you can prevent payroll frauds is to monitor canceled checks to ensure that they’re truly canceled. Payroll managers with ill intentions make the habit of processing checks that have been canceled.

4. Never sign off on a blank check.

No matter the reason, you should never sign off on an empty check. Your business finances can take a hit and it’d be quite unfortunate to realize that you authorize such transactions.

5. Hire a professional payroll provider.

An effective and lasting solution to the payroll menace is to hire the services of a professional payroll provider. A reputable payroll provider, like Consultants In-A-Box, will handle all the complexities involved in processing payroll and give you a concise report void of any financial fraud.

Consultants In-A-Box is a reputable payroll provider that offers the best solution to your payroll needs. Do contact us today to enjoy the best payroll service that your business deserves.