Posts

Streamlining Your Business with 5 Accounting Software

/0 Comments/in /by

Today’s world is dynamic in almost all facets. The statement holds for any business type across every industry. Companies need to stay up to date with the latest developments in their industry for them to survive.

Many businesses prioritise new technology for their services, products, or process of production. Yet, these companies are still using outdated systems for accounting and finance. This makes their financial management needlessly complicated.

Accounting software streamlines the financial management process of all sorts of businesses. It automates tasks such as invoicing, expense tracking, payment recording, account auditing, and report generation. The software also features automatic expense categorisation, integration with bank accounts, and transaction tracking so that businesses efficiently manage their finances with real-time information and built-in-error identifying features. Businesses can reduce errors while saving time on repetitive tasks such as generating invoices, financial reports, and bank statements. This piece unpacks the top five software you need to streamline your business.

1. QuickBooks

QuickBooks is one of the best accounting software available in the market. The software comes with an all-in-one dashboard that allows for efficient bookkeeping. It has powerful features and provides scalability for businesses. Moreover, the software can cater to small businesses with intricate financial needs. It has a broad global user base; any accountant you hire may be familiar with it.

This software is easy to use and integrates with other business applications like Shopify, Square, and PayPal. It also offers cloud-based solutions which allow you to access your data from anywhere with an internet connection.

You can deploy the QuickBooks accounting software with Intune Deployment. This will ensure that: you deploy and manage the software across the organisation, your accounting software is deployed on all devices, and only authorised users can access it. Additionally, you will have insights into your software usage. You can track how often your software is being used and by whom, and this will go a long way in assisting you in making informed decisions.

2. Expensify

As the name suggests, this software tracks and manages business expenses. Tracking expenses is more efficient and faster than traditional methods, such as manually keeping an expense reimbursement form that needs supervisory approval or keeping receipts.

The tool is vital for all businesses, with employees regularly needing to be reimbursed for expenses. It is entirely digital and eliminates the need to keep physical copies of receipts and manual stapling of expense reimbursement forms.

Your employees must take pictures of receipts, and everything will be managed through the software. The app will automatically generate and submit expense reports. After approval, reimbursements are made to individual bank accounts within 24 hours.

3. Xero

Xero is a cloud-based accounting software designed for small and medium businesses. It has a customisable dashboard that competes with QuickBooks online. The software allows unlimited users and integrates with a third-party payroll service. It has an Early plan that starts at $13 monthly and includes essential features such as business snapshots and bank reconciliation.

The Growing plan also offers unlimited bill entering, invoicing, and bulky transaction reconciliation. This plan starts at around $37.

On the other hand, you can opt for the Established plan. It costs $70 monthly, adding features such as expense claiming, project tracking, analytics, and multiple currencies.

4. FreshBooks

The software has many capabilities, making it an excellent tool for invoicing and accounting for solopreneurs, small business owners, and freelancers. It allows users to assemble an invoice quickly and accept payments through debit and credit cards, PayPal, Stripe, and automated clearing house transfers.

You can subscribe to different plans depending on your needs. Some of their plans include Lite, Plus, Select, and Premium. You will receive a 10% discount if you opt for the annual plan instead of the monthly plan on your subscription of choice.

FreshBooks is famous for its intuitive interface that offers easy navigation. If you are searching for a simple solution to organise your business accounting in a system, it will take a short time to start with the basics and send the first invoice. It is worth noting that the software is best suited for accounts with a single primary user. You will be charged an additional $10 monthly for extra team members, a large percentage if you subscribe to the lower tiers.

5. Sage Business

Sage Business is a cloud accounting software offering affordable plans to small businesses of up to 10 employees. It has a $25 monthly subscription with unlimited users and cash flow forecasting. The start plan is $10 monthly and comes with invoice creation, automatic bank reconciliation, and tracking credit on top of other features and integrations.

Closure

Selecting the right software for your business can be overwhelming due to the many options available. It is vital to select a solution that can cater to the needs of your business while providing fundamental features like bookkeeping, financial management, and expense tracking. The above software is a great option and will sort these requirements to ensure your business accounting processes are streamlined. Remember to conduct your research, compare the pricing, and test the software out to understand which one best works for your needs

How to Choose the Right Accountancy Software for Making Tax Digital

/4 Comments/in /by

Making Tax Digital is the United Kingdom government’s flagship programme to make tax accounting easier for businesses and individuals such as sole traders. As you might guess from the name, it does this by legislating the digitalisation of tax data and submission.

Many businesses faced with complying with Making Tax Digital need to take some time to assess their current business needs, how these might change in the near to medium-term future, and figure out what technology they’ll need to comply.

The key driver behind Making Tax Digital is to move businesses, no matter their size, to some form of digital accounting. Making Tax Digital is seen as not only a major efficiency win for the enterprises concerned, but it also enables the government to streamline the tax systems that are in place today. In an ideal world, this would mean an online tax account for every business and self-employed person, for fast and efficient tax filing.

However, how businesses use IT can vary significantly, particularly as access to certain technologies is not always possible. Adopting Making Tax Digital may be a significant challenge for some enterprises, while for others it will require little more than a few tweaks to their existing systems. The vast majority of companies will, however, fall between these two extremes.

It because of this that calls have been issued to delay the rollout of Making Tax Digital, currently expected to arrive in April, something that the United Kingdom government has seemingly rejected.

Tax Shouldn’t be Taxing

How your business’ digital accounting systems will evolve will, of course, depend on many factors. Your company may already use some form of digital accounting software, so the question may be, does this application need to be upgraded to be compatible with Making Tax Digital?

With research from Spiceworks revealing 52% of businesses are still using Windows XP, this doesn’t bode well for small enterprises keeping their accounting applications up-to-date.

There is also the matter of training and competence with the applications, especially if these are new to your company. It won’t be possible to instantly use any of the cloud-based applications without a period of training. Factoring this into your transition period is vital.

Small business owners are also concerned that their level of technical knowledge won’t be good enough to avoid what could be costly mistakes when choosing new digital accounting systems.

Peter Ford, public sector industry principal at Pegasystems, says that his company is working with HMRC to develop their front facing services.

Your business’s current level of technical knowledge will determine how complex supporting Making Tax Digital will be for your company. Small businesses, in particular, will have to potentially make the most radical changes, as until now they may have simply completed their own self-assessment tax form. In the world of MTD, moving to a hosted accounting service will be unavoidable.

Understanding your Objectives

Mark Taylor, a technical manager in the Technical Innovation wing of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, explains to IT Pro that businesses need to assess their requirements before choosing an Making Tax Digital software provider.

As with all software moves, pitfalls are almost certainly going to be encountered, yet, given the fierce market competition that is developing ahead of the April deadline, vendors will be trying to make the onboarding process as simple as possible.

Approaching the transition to digital accounting and tax filing needs all the due diligence you would use when choosing any new services for your business. Today, the cloud-based accounting market has continued to expand and evolve. Stalwarts of business accounting such as Sage have been joined by newer services such as FreeAgent and Crunch. What they all attempt to do is simplify the accounting and tax filing processes all business must comply with.

As each application or service is different, one size doesn’t fit all. Take your time to talk to other businesses in your sector. Case studies and information from your business’s trade associations can often shed light on the shortcomings of some applications or services you may not be aware of. Use this knowledge to make sure you purchase the right digital services to comply with Making Tax Digital.