Bookkeeping Organization and Simple Timesaving Tips

Welcome to Simple Business Solutions Blog Site. This site will be updated often with various helpful training information, program TIPS, and information that is affecting small businesses today. Please continue to check this site for any topics that we specialize in and all of your business outsourcing needs.

Many small businesses today face challenges when it comes to the best way to organize and keep business expenses proactively managed. In order to best position your company to do this you must first look back and be prepared to obtain some detailed information and then looking forward you will find there may be many ways to control your business expenses.

First let’s review what the goals of bookkeeping and accounting really are:

• to keep track of your income and expenses, thus improving your chances of making a profit
• to collect the necessary financial information about your business allowing you to file necessary various tax returns and local tax registration papers
  

Sounds simple, right? There is no official "right" way to organize your books, just keep these two goals in mind and it will help to prevent you from feeling overwhelmed. As long as your records accurately reflect your business's income and expenses, the IRS will consider them acceptable.

The actual process of keeping your books is easier to understand when we look at the three steps that need to be taken in keeping this important information.

1. Keep receipts or other acceptable records of every payment to and every expenditure from your business.
2. Summarize your income and expenditure records on some periodic basis (generally daily, weekly, or monthly).
3. Use your summaries to create financial reports that will tell you specific information about your business, such as how much monthly profit you're making or how much your business is worth at a specific point in time.

Whether you do your accounting by hand on ledger sheets or use accounting software, these principles are the same. At Simple Business Solutions we will provide you with professional Quickbooks ProAdvisor service that includes; bookkeeping software and training. The program is so easy to use the organization of your business expenses is very simple and will seem as though it is no work at all, and the report capabilities are endless and specific to your industry. The Quickbooks software allows you the opportunity to get your expenses entered and continue to stay updated very easily so as a business it is easy to remain proactive when it comes to spending and saving money.

Give our office a call at 515-986-0373 and tell them you want to learn more about the Quickbooks ProAdvisor capabilities we have to offer. Tell them Craig sent you!

MS Excel Tip of the Week
Saving time is crucial when working in MS Excel. One way to save time is to keep your hand off the mouse and on your keyboard with “quick key” features. Some of the tips we will be focusing on in the month of September will be how to use features that are available on most versions of MS Excel. Summarizing numbers is one of the most widely used features in MS Excel for even the most novice of users. To summarize cells using the “quick keys” feature simple insert by holding down the “Alt & +/=” keys on your keyboard. Just another tip for YOUR Simple Business Solution!

MS Word Tip of the Week
Saving time is crucial when working in MS Word. You need to get out 15 proposals by the end of the day and so far you’ve only completed one…ugh…what are you going to do? The solution is simple, copy and paste - right? Keep your hands off of that mouse though.

You can use the “quick key” features on your keyboard, available in MS Word, to Copy and Paste instead of using your mouse. Simply hold down your “shift key & arrow” to highlight your text within your document. Once you have the information you want to copy highlighted, hold down “Ctrl & the letter c” to copy, move your curser to the location that you want to paste to, then hold down “Ctrl & the letter v” to paste. If you would like to cut and paste instead, simply hold down “Ctrl & the letter x”, move your curser to the new location to paste, and hold down “Ctrl & the letter v”. Just another tip for YOUR Simple Business Solution!

If you have questions about these tips or want to add your own, please feel free to email, call, or post a comment.