Companies that utilize technology and streamline processes are setting themselves up for time and cost savings. Below are 5 ways to capitalize on some of these opportunities:
Rules – Most accounting systems have an option to put “rules” in place for transactions that come through from the business bank account. For example, you can set a rule that tells your accounting system that every time it sees a transaction that comes through for the vendor “Jim’s Nursery” to categorize it automatically as “job site materials”. Setting rules decreases the amount of time you have to spend categorizing transactions.
Bank Feeds in QuickBooks – There is an option on QuickBooks to connect your business bank and credit card accounts. This integrates your banks and credit cards to QuickBooks so that it automatically downloads your transactions daily. Activating bank feeds saves you time on entering business transactions manually. Performing bookkeeping on an excel sheet may save you the monthly cost of an accounting software, but the time spent manually entering transactions in excel can be lengthy (and therefore costly!).
Payroll Integrations – Most payroll providers have the ability to integrate with your accounting system. If you integrate your payroll system with your accounting system it will automatically post your payroll information to your accounting system. This makes record keeping easy and fast, since you don’t have to worry about manually recording payroll transactions into your accounting system.
Third Party Applications – QuickBooks Online has the ability to sync with your applications, which can save you time. You may have a landscape management software where you create estimates, invoice, receive payments, routing, and many other functions. Many of these landscape management software applications sync with your accounting system, making it easy to copy over invoices and payments. There are also time tracking software’s that integrate to your accounting software, making job costing easier.
Chart of Accounts – Chart of accounts are the buckets in which your business transactions get classified into. For example, if you purchase a zero-turn mower, it will get classified as a fixed asset called “mower”. It is important to establish this when you implement your accounting system such as QuickBooks or Xero. Most of these accounting systems come with a generic chart of accounts, instead you should implement a green industry chart of accounts. Setting up green industry chart of accounts is essential because it will enable you to compare your business financials to other green industry businesses confidently (comparing apples to apples). It also ensures that you properly record items into the correct account types such as assets, liabilities, equity, income, cost of sales, and overhead expenses. It increases efficiency to have a correct and standardized chart of accounts, because it takes the guess work out of the equation.
Bookkeeping is not the only area of your business where automations can help efficiency. Staying up to date with technology is how companies are able to start, scale, and exit successfully.