5 Tips For Entrepreneur Accounting

The administrative burden of being an entrepreneur or self-employed was probably not one of the reasons why you decided to start your own business. While it is true that for most entrepreneurs billing and accounting is something that tends to be procrastinated, if you organize yourself well from the beginning, we promise you that it is not such a terrible thing.

Take a look at the 5 tips below to save time when it comes to keeping your books.

1. Send clear invoices

As a freelancer or entrepreneur, you must get paid on time, so there must be no doubts about the content of the invoices that you have issued to your clients. It should be completely clear how much they have to pay you for the products or services and how they should pay it.

How do you make sure an invoice is clear? Very simple: choose a well-structured template in which you can add all the required information and you can be precise when adding that information. You are not interested in making mistakes or inaccuracies that you have to correct later with a credit note. This unnecessarily contaminates your accounting and makes it more confusing.
You should see your invoices as your second business card. If the design of your invoices gives a clear and professional image, this can do a lot for your reputation and that of your business.

2. Save time by automating tasks

We live in a digital age in which more and more, everything is being automated. Why shouldn't that be the case with your billing? One of the best decisions you can make as an entrepreneur is to get a billing program that is easy and intuitive to use.

In this way, you will be able to access it and have an overview of the situation of your business wherever you are. In most billing programs, the amounts or quantities of the sales and purchase invoices that you have recorded will automatically be included in the VAT report, the balance sheet, and the profit and loss account.

Thus, it will not be necessary to add all the amounts or amounts in an Excel sheet, to perform the calculations, but they will be done automatically, thus avoiding calculation errors. What other advantages does this have? Well, it's very simple: by automating these processes, you will be saving time (and unnecessary headaches) that you can invest in many other things. That is, you will have more productive hours or, failing that, more free time.
Also, you can bill on a recurring basis with your billing program; that is, you can automatically send invoices on a weekly, monthly or annual basis to the same customer. You will only have to configure your recurring invoices correctly and that's it. This is especially useful if you offer subscription products or services and have a lot of regular customers.

There are many more things that you can automate with an invoicing program: this way you will have much more time to dedicate to the tasks that interest you.

3. Register your expenses immediately

If you wait too long to record expenses and save your business receipts, you can end up forgetting or even losing them altogether. We recommend that you make it a habit to record your expenses immediately or at least on the same day so that you do not end up losing the deductible VAT.

This becomes an easier task if you have the help of a mobile app from a billing program. You can use the mobile app to take photos of your receipts or invoices: in this way, all the data will be automatically read and stored in your accounting.

If you can make it a habit, your spending record will no longer have to be related to the typical shoebox full of receipts that you must dust off every three months.

4. Be consistent with your accounting records

Try to follow a routine to record your information and keep it up to date. For example, record all your expenses at the end of the working day and assign a fixed day of the week to check the payment status of your invoices and, if necessary, send payment reminders to your clients.

If keeping your accounting up to date becomes one more habit during the week, everything will be easier for you!

5. Save all your important documents in the cloud

It is always a good idea to ensure that all your business data is safely stored in the cloud. In this way, you would avoid losing important data if, for example, your computer crashed.

If you make a cloud copy of your accounting and billing, make sure that the copy is well organized. You can organize your information by months and by type of information: invoices, expenses, etc.

If you use an invoicing program, all documents will be automatically stored in the cloud and you will have them just a couple of clicks away from you. Simply by logging in with your username and password you will be able to access all the invoices that you have issued and the expenses that you have raised.