Every small business needs a reliable accounting system. In this way, you can stay on track with your business goals, and use your data to manage and project cash flows accurately.
Here is a list of key tasks you can perform to simplify and streamline the financial workflow.
Daily Tasks
- Check your cash position
In some ways, it is obvious that cash is king. Small businesses often rely heavily on cash, so managing it well is essential to their success. Check your cash flow daily and monitor its projection.
To maintain a healthy balance, your business can still afford upcoming expenses. When you factor in accounts receivable and accounts payable, you get a better idea of the assets and liabilities of your business.
- Maintain a daily transaction log
In order to ensure accurate bookkeeping, every incoming and outgoing transaction must be recorded. Receiving cash or credit from customers are considered incoming transactions, whereas paying suppliers is considered outgoing.
It can become overwhelming as your transaction volume grows if you record these transactions manually in Excel.
- Document invoices
In addition to recording transactions, you must keep copies of all invoices received and issued. This ensures that every sale and purchase is accounted for, and the proof of purchase remains in the accounts. The Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) requires that proper records of accounts be kept for a minimum of five years. Additionally, this would be helpful when the year-end period comes around, when all businesses are required to file taxes with IRAS.
Weekly
- Analyze vendor transactions
Vendor payments should be handled efficiently to ensure a healthy financial position and a long-term relationship with your vendors. Adding the vendor bills that you receive to your accounts payable weekly ensures that these payments are made on time.
The majority of suppliers offer purchase discounts, which give a certain percentage of discount if payments are made by a certain date. Small businesses would benefit as this would increase savings, especially if you buy in bulk. Similarly, late payments may result in penalties that would be detrimental to your business.
- To prepare and send invoices
Prepare an invoice that includes details of your business, the invoice number, the date, the goods or services sold, and terms of payment. Invoice numbers make it easy to identify transactions, and payment terms allow you to better predict revenue. It also makes it clearer to clients when payments are due and what the overdue charges are.
- Analyze projected cash flow
Following the previous steps, you should have a better understanding of your expenses and sales for the upcoming weeks. You should forecast your cash flow based on that information to see how much you would need to pay in total compared to how much you expect to receive. By simply collating your cash receipts and bills, and comparing it to the current cash position, you can determine your cash position.
Monthly
- Reconcile your books
To ensure that the cash recorded matches the cash collected, you must balance your books. Thus, it minimizes the amount of errors that go into projecting your upcoming cash positions and ensures that no cash is missed.
- Review aged receivables
Basically, aged receivables are overdue accounts receivable from customers. As you review these transactions according to the invoices previously issued, you will better be able to identify who has not paid and when it is time to collect payments. Furthermore, an increase in receivables may not always be a good thing since it may be caused by these aged receivables, which indicate that cash is not properly collected.
- Review the balance sheet
The monthly review of your balance sheet will assist you in determining if your projected cash flow matches your actual sales, and if not, what is causing the difference. By comparing your balance sheet at the end of the month to previous dates, you can determine what has improved and what has deteriorated.
Over to You
Although you could do all the accounting alone, it’s always advisable to work with a professional accounting expert – like Afitty. We’ll go deep into the nitty-gritty of your company’s financials, and polish up all the details to ensure accuracy and compliance.
Additionally, you can count on us to handle all your company’s accounting on your behalf. Basically, you will not have to do anything at all.
Learn more about our accounting solutions by contacting us today. Our consultations are free of charge.
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