Salt Lake City Bookkeeping Blog

Over the 14 years I have owned a bookkeeping service you can imagine that I've seen a lot of different sets of books; the good, the bad, and the incredibly ugly. To be honest, more often than not the books are pretty bad. It's little things here and there, that just compound to make up an overall bad bookkeeping system. 

Once a bookkeeping system has gone bad it loses its value to the business, the team, and the owner. It becomes a constant frustration for everyone. So typically everyone gives up on the books as a lost cause.

In this post, I cover certain necessities that a great bookkeeping system must have.

I was recently approached by a business about setting up an automated bookkeeping system before they had even started the business.

Making the decision to outsource the bookkeeping for a small business is not an easy one for most owners. Your bookkeeper handles a lot of sensitive financial information, so using an outsourced provider for this business function can make anyone uneasy.

Every restaurant's bookkeeping is unique. The business has to bring in information from many different sources, track daily sales, complete credit card transactions, and monitor inventory.

There are so many different methods for recording each that it takes a customized system to make sure the information is being recorded correctly.

In order to maintain function and control within a restaurant, five components are necessary: (1) a POS system, (2) a bookkeeping team, (3) financial reporting, (4) anti-theft mechanisms, and (5) a solid method for handling accounts payable.

Within ten years of starting, 71% of all small businesses will fail, so it's easy to understand why small businesses cannot make expensive mistakes. Generally speaking, a lot of owners will have to shut the doors due to a lack of cash. A quarter of them will shut the door before the end of year one and 44% leave the market before the end of year three. 

Bookkeeping can help save small business owners from this problem.

I had a really interesting conversation with one of my advisors from the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program yesterday. He was astounded by how many small businesses don't understand their bookkeeping and dismayed by those who see no value in it. We commiserated over the many successful small businesses who don't have an adequate bookkeeping system in place to understand their current situation. They don't even know the status of their accounts receivable (AR), accounts payable (AP), or cash flow.

Many business owners don’t see the value in their bookkeeping, so they tend to ignore it. However, once you have been shown the value of the financial aspects of a business, you will then quickly want to master your small business bookkeeping. The following three steps will turn your bookkeeping system from a hindrance into a valuable tool that you can use to grow your business.

If your small business bookkeeping is not providing you with valuable information, you are missing out on a key business tool. Bookkeeping should not be a drag or a chore; it should be a business tool that promotes growth. Here are 9 things you can do for your small business bookkeeping that promote growth.

I was thinking about how dialed in my bookkeeping system is; both for our business and our personal books because I keep both. Bookkeeping comes very easy to me obviously and is also near the top of my priority list. Most people that blog are going to write about their particular service because it's what they know and believe to be most important. Salesmen are going to tell you that sales are the most important thing. Marketing services will tell you it's all about marketing to your prospects. Executive coaches will tell you it's all about planning and execution. So who is right? Well everyone is correct because each facet of business is incredibly important. In order to succeed you need to be good at all of them and you need to find the right balance between them. Here are 7 effective bookkeeping habits that you can implement right now.