How to Do Bookkeeping for Small Business in Excel: 6 Methods

The reality, though, is that most entrepreneurs don’t love the accounting process. It may feel Online Accounting like it takes time away from more important — or enjoyable — tasks.. There is a learning curve that can be intimidating to beginners, and it’s easy to make mistakes. I have found that several small businesses do not know where all their paperwork is.

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Department of Labor, also have recordkeeping requirements for discrimination claims. If you’re serious about making your business successful, you’ll need to create a system for bookkeeping and managing your financing. Small errors can grow into major problems if you don’t catch and correct them quickly. Set up regular review periods to catch issues early, and don’t hesitate to ask for professional help if you find yourself making these common mistakes repeatedly.

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Conduct monthly book reviews, focusing on transaction reconciliations, past due accounts, and balance sheet comparisons. Remember to perform a quarterly check-in on sales and estimated income tax. Double-check past-due receivables, inventory, and income to file taxes and assess business growth.

Tax records

Add an unlimited number of free sub-users to your account, such as family members, employees, accountants, and tax professionals. Expense reports let you view all of your expenses in one cohesive document. They also make it simple to share your purchases with your accountant. Importing e-receipts to your Shoeboxed account is as easy as syncing your Gmail with Shoeboxed, using Shoeboxed’s special Gmail Receipt Sync feature.

• If you have employees, you’ll want to get a clear understanding of what documentation related to hiring you need to keep.
• LegalZoom provides access to independent attorneys and self-service tools.
• Some external agencies, such as the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC), require businesses to keep documents for PCI compliance.
• Use our research to quickly and easily find the right account for your business.
• Efficient record-keeping doesn’t just make tax filing easy – it also helps you keep track of your expenses and produce proof during audits or lawsuits if required.

These documents should help you establish the date, place, amount and reason for the expense. We believe everyone should be able to make financial decisions with confidence. If you have at least 15 employees, anti-discrimination laws require you to keep employment records for one year from the date the record was made or personnel action was taken. This includes job applications and anything else related to hiring, rehiring, promotions, transfers, employment tests, demotions, layoffs, or selection of personnel for training.

• Train employees on these procedures to maintain uniformity across the organisation.
• While this might work for very small businesses with simple transactions, double-entry bookkeeping provides a more complete and accurate picture.
• Previously, she was an editor at Fundera, where she developed service-driven content on topics such as business lending, software and insurance.
• Orders, bills, payment histories, project schedules, finished deliverables, letters, and meeting minutes ought to all be kept in a customer relationship management (CRM) system.
• She has an MBA from Duke University and a degree in business economics from UC Santa Barbara.
• Business-related contracts or agreements should also be maintained for a similar timeframe to account for any contingent liabilities or audit needs.
• There’s no need to keep piles of paper or shoeboxes of receipts lying around.

Instead of worrying whether you should be keeping or getting rid of them, you can archive them permanently. Before you toss them, double check to see whether anyone else you do business with might need them. Creditors, business lawyers, and insurance companies all sometimes require you to keep records longer than the IRS does. If you do end up going the paperless route, record keeping for small business remember to keep a backup copy of your documents in a secure second location, like a password-protected hard drive, or a secondary cloud storage service. Get free guides, articles, tools and calculators to help you navigate the financial side of your business with ease.

Most financial institutions, including credit card companies and banks, send customers electronic statements, so keeping paper versions on hand may be unnecessary. Your Bench bookkeeping Record Keeping for Small Business team automates your financial admin, connecting bank accounts, credit cards, and payment processors to import information into our platform. Your team also answers questions and completes your tax prep ahead of filing.