Bookkeeping can be a real challenge. Even experienced specialists can face the stress of managing finances. What to say about business owners or aspiring specialists who have little to no experience?
The good news is that bookkeeping can be easy. All you need is to get organized and know a couple of tips, and we are here to help you get on the right track and gain control over your budget!
Before You Get Started
In this article, we are going to give you all the tools you need to get bookkeeping right. Whether you are a business owner, a bookkeeper with lots of work experience, or someone who is just looking to start a career in this field, the basics remain the same for everyone. But, before we get there, let us give you a few tips on how to do things easier.
Tips for Business Owners
If you are an owner of a business (especially a small or a new one), you may have to take care of bookkeeping on your own if you don’t yet have the budget to employ a full-time worker. If that’s the case, our guide will help you get on the right track. But, before you move on, be sure to consider hiring a remote or freelance employee.
This way you will save your time and nerves, without going over your budget.
Tips for Beginners
If you are an aspiring specialist looking to land a job, this guide should definitely come in handy. Here, you’ll learn the basic tips and tricks for doing the work well. But, remember that in order to get employed, you will also need to craft a winning resume. And that’s where the real challenge starts.
Luckily, today, there are plenty of great career resources out there that can help you ensure success. All you need is to find a reliable writing service where you can come and say “please, help me write my bookkeeper resume,” and you will get a bot-beating resume that turns heads.
Although learning bookkeeping basics may not be too hard, what is hard is to create a solid resume that can engage potential employers and recruiters and help you land an interview. Many job seekers make plenty of mistakes in their applications that hold them back from landing their first jobs. So, if you are a young specialist and don’t know how to create a job-winning resume, be sure to get professional help.
Tips for Pros
If you are a professional, chances are that you already know the basics. Still, we are sure that you will also find some handy tips here. So, keep on reading to take your qualification to the next level and brush up on the key skills.
A Comprehensive Guide to Bookkeeping: 8 Tips and Tricks to Know
Whether you already occupy a bookkeeper position, are only at the beginning of your job search and have no professional experience yet, or even if you are an entrepreneur who has never dealt with bookkeeping, here is a comprehensive guide with handy tips that will help you get things right.
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Start With the Basics
Before you do anything, make sure that you understand the basics. By “basics” we literally mean the basic terms that you are going to face when you engage in bookkeeping.
If you are a pro and already know all these terms, feel free to move on to other tips. But, if you have never faced any job-related terms before, here is a checklist of what you should learn before getting started:
- Accounts payable
- Accounts receivable
- Assets
- Balance sheet
- Capital
- Costs of goods sold
- Depreciation
- Equity
- Expenses
- General ledger
- Income statements
- Journals
- Liabilities
- Payroll
- Revenue
- Trial balance
These are the basic terms every bookkeeper should be well aware of. Many of them may be already familiar to you. But, if there is anything you don’t yet understand, be sure to make up for the lack of knowledge of relevant terminology.
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Create a New Account
If we had to name the most vital bookkeeping tip for entrepreneurs, it would definitely be – create a new business account. One of the most common mistakes business owners make is trying to manage their personal and business funds within a single account. Such an approach can cause too much confusion and make it extremely hard to track the expenses.
In order to avoid this, be sure to have separate accounts for personal and business needs.
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Have a Separate Budget for Taxes
Often, when it’s time for paying taxes, it can really catch you by surprise and get rather nerve-wracking. In order to avoid stress from having to allocate a huge amount of tax money at once, we recommend keeping a separate budget for this purpose.
For example, you can run a separate savings account. This way, whenever you get the tax bill, you’ll know that you have enough money saved to pay it.
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Make Daily Records
The next tip will come in handy to everyone. It is super basic, but, at the same time, many people (both pros and beginners) neglect it.
Once you make it a rule to maintain daily records, you will notice how easy it becomes to monitor your finances. Besides, it is a great way to avoid mistakes.
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Keep Track of All Expenses
One of the hardest parts of bookkeeping is making sure you have all the expenses tracked. It gets especially hard if your business uses cash for some types of expenses. But, here is a handy tip – if you start using a business credit card to pay for stuff, you’ll have all your expenses tracked and bills stored together. It really makes things much easier as this way you will never leave any expenses undocumented.
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Organize Your Records Well
Whether you are using physical bills, credit card records, or other ways to document your expenses, you should always make sure that you organize all your records well in order to avoid mistakes, omissions, and confusion.
Organize your records by type, purpose, or other characteristics, and be sure to store them as long as necessary.
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Always Keep an Eye on Deadlines
It always feels overwhelming to suddenly realize that your tax deadline is just around the corner. Not to mention how stressful it can be to get penalties for missing a deadline. An easy tip to avoid this is to keep all tax deadlines on your schedule (preferably with timely reminders). This way you will never miss a deadline and will ease the stress.
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Consider Using Special Software
Finally, here is a bonus tip you may find handy – if you feel like bookkeeping is getting tough, start using special software to make things a bit easier. Luckily, today, there are plenty of apps and tools to make records, organize them, pay taxes, and handle a variety of other bookkeeping tasks quicker and easier.
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