Keeping correct and accurate records of the finances of your business is essential to:
– Knowing who owes you money (“debtors”)
– Knowing who you owe money to – suppliers, HMRC and other bodies (“creditors”)
– Complying with your obligation to know your company’s current financial position at any time, and ensure you can pay your bills as they fall due
– Complying with your legal requirement to maintain proper books and records
– And, most importantly, knowing how much you can pay yourself
– Producing appropriate accounts and tax calculations to Companies House and HMRC
There are numerous online systems to enable you to do this.
Poor bookkeeping can result in incorrect tax being paid, erroneous decisions being made and sadly in many cases bankruptcy or corporate insolvency. The stress this puts business owners under can be considerable.
Keeping books and records can be daunting to begin with and many business owners design their own spreadsheets and databases to keep on top of their financial records.
Soon, all businesses will be required to keep their financial records in a digital format by law under “Making Tax Digital” and pencil and paper will no longer do.
Fortunately there are many systems to choose from and the best dramatically reduce the amount of time you need to spend on your bookkeeping. A cloud based system makes the most sense as it avoids the need to back data up, keep that data secure and enables you to access that data anywhere with an Internet connection and share it easily with your accountant.
The most advanced link directly to your bank and can extract the data from scanned receipts or PDF documents, saving you time effort and reducing the risk of error. They can also assist in managing the business and produce good forecasts of what cash you can expect to have in the business.
It is a sad fact that so many new businesses fail in the first year and research indicates that poor financial management, as a result of bad to non-existent bookkeeping, is a common issue.