In both our business life and personal life, we all have a system for keeping on top of our bookkeeping and I’m quite sure some are more organised than others.
You might rather like checking your incomings and outgoings every day, week or month, but either way, particularly in business, bookkeeping is essential. Every business should keep track of their income and expenses, if you don’t know what your cashflow really looks like you could run into big problems down the line.
What is bookkeeping?
Bookkeeping is essentially the task of recording all of the business’s financial information, so that it is easy to see what money is coming in, and what is being spent.
As a small business owner, it is easy to get caught up in the day to day business activities but in order for your business thrive, you should be balancing your books every single month. If you don’t, how do you know if you will have enough to cover your next lot of expenses?
Many small business owners will take on the bookkeeping themselves when they first start their business, if this is your choice, get in to the habit of doing your bookkeeping every month at least or you risk getting in to bad habits and falling behind.
Outsourcing to a professional bookkeeper frees up your time to focus on your business, and if your business isn’t a bookkeeping business then you are probably better at doing something else, if you are fantastic at bookkeeping, maybe you want to join the Rosemary Team?
But why is bookkeeping important?
In short, if you don’t have a good working knowledge of the finances of your business, there is a very good chance that you won’t be running your business very long. According to ‘Investopedia’, the top reason for small businesses failing is financial hurdles.
Whatever your business there are ongoing costs throughout the year, for example for VAT registered companies VAT Returns must be submitted 4 times a year digitally – MTD. Good bookkeeping means you will be able to correctly calculate how much is due and make sure the return is submitted on time.
If you are self-employed you must file a Self-Assessment tax return every year. Keeping on top of your bookkeeping will help you submit your return in good time, saving a last minute panic and rush to gather information or worse yet missing some and facing a fine.
But it’s all fine, you have an accountant so you can just send them everything before your end of year right? Even if you have an accountant, you will still need you to keep on top of your bookkeeping so that they can create your accounts on a good set of books. If you have records missing or unordered, they may not be able to do their job.
At Rosemary Bookkeeping we can take care of your day to day bookkeeping and provide the reports you need, so you can take care of your business. We can also liaise directly with your accountant, to free up more of your valuable time.
If you feel like you don’t understand the bookkeeping side of your business, or just don’t have time to do it, you can always contact your local Rosemary Bookkeeping office here.
