It’s important to make sure that your bookkeeping data is good. Otherwise you can’t use that data reliably to run your business. When doing your own bookkeeping, there are common mistakes that often get made. In this episode of MissionBusinessPodcast.com Bernard Roesch explains some of the common mistakes that he sees businesses make with bookkeeping and how you can avoid these mistakes to make sure your data can be used to run your business.
If you have any questions about this podcast episode, please feel free to contact us.
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Have a Workflow That Helps You Avoid Mistakes
One of the most common mistakes that is made is not having a workflow in place when doing your bookkeeping. By not having a workflow and doing bookkeeping randomly throughout the month, you open yourself up to the likelihood of making mistakes.
Below are tips you can use to create an effective bookkeeping workflow in your business.
Log Activity as it Happens in QuickBooks – If you get a bill from a customer, enter the bill into QuickBooks. Similarly don’t wait to invoice a customer until you receive a check as payment for their services. Create invoices or sales receipts as services are provided so that you can match payments to these invoices or sales receipts when the payment is received.
Keep Physical Paperwork Up-to-Date – If you receive a physical bill from a vendor, keep that organized in your office. Once you have entered the bill in QuickBooks, mark it as posted so that you don’t enter it again in the future. Once the bill has been paid, you can mark the physical bill “paid” so that you know that it has been fully processed and is available in QuickBooks.
Match Sent or Received Payments to QuickBooks Records – When it’s time to pay a bill or receive payment, make sure that you do that within QuickBooks and match it to the appropriate QuickBooks bill, invoice, or sales receipt. This ensures that your QuickBooks records are kept up-to-date as the business is operating rather than after the fact.
Use QuickBooks Features to Catch Errors – QuickBooks has a number of features in place that will help you avoid making certain errors.
- Duplicate Transactions – When entering bills or checks in QuickBooks, be sure to use the bill number or check number option in QuickBooks.
- If you enter a bill multiple times while including the bill number, QuickBooks will warn you about a potential duplicate. The same duplication message is shown for duplicate check numbers.
- Using this type of feature is an easy way to catch potential duplicates before they are entered into QuickBooks.
- Use QuickBooks Reports to See Potential Errors – You can use QuickBooks reports to compare transactions for the current time period to previous time periods.
- Comparing these reports side-by-side is an easy way to see significant differences between time periods.
- Your business will change over time, but this is a great way for you to catch transactions that were entered incorrectly if you see big changes that should not have happened.
- Within these reports, you can view high-level details for certain areas of the business or drill down into specific transactions within each part of the business.
We Can Help You
If you need help building an effective bookkeeping workflow and process for your business, contact Bernard today.
You can also visit MissionBusinessPodcast.com for more insights that Bernard has been sharing with us in the previous episodes.
Need to find the right QuickBooks software for your business? MISSION Accounting can help.
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