How to control your business finances in 5 easy steps

How to control your business finances in 5 easy steps

The ability to manage your business finances effectively is a huge advantage. In this way, you can make well-informed business decisions and maintain the profitability of your organization.

It has never been easier to manage, track, and forecast your financial position with so many digital tools for bookkeeping, accounting, and management reporting.

The question is, what tools do you need? Then how do you get back in control of your finances by setting up your financial systems, apps, processes, and reports?

1. Get your bookkeeping up to date with digital technology

The use of digital bookkeeping apps can help you digitize receipts, records, and source documents. In addition to saving you a lot of time at year-end, this makes keeping track of your business’s finances and accounting much easier. The method of keeping receipts in a box and manually entering them at period-end is no longer sufficient. You should then digitise your receipts at the source so you have up-to-date records and copies of the original documents.

Dext Prepare or Auto Entry use optical character recognition (OCR) software to digitize receipts, convert them to digital formats, and store them online.

2. Streamline your accounting with the cloud

SaaS (software-as-a-service) accounting is a way to do all your main accounting and financial management online without installing any software.

Accounting platforms, such as Xero, QuickBooks, MYOB or Sage, are designed to take away the pain and hassle of business accounting. This software provides all the tools and features you need to perform accounting tasks. As part of your platform provider’s services, they will also take care of your data storage, backups, and security.

A good cloud accounting platform does more than simply save hard drive space. Additionally, it provides tools and dashboards for accessing management information, financial reporting, forecasting and projections, and tracking performance.

3. Get the most out of expense management tools

The process of managing expenses can be tedious and time-consuming. However, it’s also a vital task that ensures you spend funds wisely and don’t go overboard. Overspending employees can be a costly mistake for your business and your cash flow.

Employees can use virtual cards linked to a specific budget, account, or code with expense management tools, such as Soldo, Weel, and Pleo. In this way, you can keep track of their expenses easily and make sure that they stay within their budgets. Detailed reporting and analytics are also available on these platforms, so you can see where money is being spent and where you can save.

4. Allow digital payments to be accepted easily

Slow payments are one of the most frustrating things for small businesses. In the event that your customers do not pay on time, you may lose revenue, suffer poor cashflow, and be unable to cover your basic costs and overheads. Many businesses have begun to switch to digital payment platforms that make collecting payments simpler, faster, and easier.

In addition to faster payment times, payment platforms such as PayPal, Square, or Stripe offer greater control over the customer experience. You can even integrate some platforms with your cloud accounting system to automatically reconcile your bank account.

5. Take advantage of the latest digital reporting and forecasting tools

Embrace the latest in digital reporting and forecasting now that digital accounting has evolved so rapidly in recent years.

It is difficult to predict economic conditions. Thus, it’s crucial to be able to analyse data quickly, check your performance, and predict how your company will do in the future. By using cloud solutions for financial reporting and key metrics, you can monitor trends in real-time and access data anytime, anywhere.

Having this information at your fingertips helps you make informed decisions faster – and that leads to more sales, greater profit growth, and more business growth.

Let’s talk about updating your financial systems

Give your finances a touch of digital magic by contacting us today.

Our experts can walk you through the best cloud platforms, fintech apps, and business tools to integrate into your app stack so you can make the most of a digital financial approach

For supercharged finances, contact us.