No matter what size your business is, you’ll need to take steps to ensure you’re organizing your finances correctly. As your own bookkeeper, your job is to become a master organizer and provide key insights into the financial state of your business.
In this post, we’ll outline a few tips for maximizing your effectiveness as a bookkeeper by streamlining your financial organization processes.
- Establish a filing system (and stick to it!). Start by setting up a comprehensive system for organizing your financial information and documents. Your tools can include carefully labeled file folders that are meticulously organized, or you can opt for a more tech-savvy approach and utilize online software to manage receipts, invoices, bank statements, and tax records.
- Develop a consistent naming convention. As we mentioned above, consistency is key for any bookkeeper. Create a naming convention for your filing system that you can implement across the board for easy file identification. Relevant information such as dates, vendors, and document purposes are good to include in your system.
- Decide on a document retention policy. You don’t have to keep every document forever (nor should you), so establish a guideline for how long certain documents need to be kept and when it’s time to dispose of them. Be sure your policies will comply with any regulatory requirements or industry best practices.
- Regularly reconcile your accounts. By making sure you schedule regular reconciliations of your bank accounts, credit card statements, and any other financial accounts, you can catch discrepancies early and quickly correct them.
- Include record-keeping tasks in your schedule. Many small business owners act as their own bookkeeper while performing other roles within the company. If that’s your situation, make sure to carve out time within your schedule to devote to bookkeeping.
If you need the help of a professional bookkeeper, our team at Goodson & Taylor CPAs is here to help. Contact us today to learn more!