How to Save Time on Bookkeeping

Time is money. This statement is never truer than when you’re running a small business. As a small business owner, you have to wear many hats and will likely spend a lot of time on tasks that don’t directly lead to more business—like bookkeeping.

Bookkeeping is an integral part of running a successful business, but it’s not an activity that most small business owners enjoy doing—or even know how to do efficiently. As such, bookkeeping may be taking your time away from other pressing areas like marketing, product development, and production.

Consider these tips to help you save time on bookkeeping and return to running your small business.

Separate Your Business and Personal Finances

Many small business owners fail to separate their personal and business finances. As a result, discerning your business expenses from your personal ones can be both difficult and time-consuming. If you want to streamline your bookkeeping, consider separating your finances.

Not only will this make your bookkeeping faster—it also leads to fewer errors and can mitigate many of the headaches that come with filing taxes.

Consolidate Your Accounts

In addition to keeping your business financials separate from personal, you should also consolidate your business accounts. Instead of having multiple business credit cards or accepting payments via PayPal, cash, and ACH, try to consolidate all incoming and outcoming transactions using 1 account. 

By consolidating your business accounts, you’ll avoid having money coming in and out of several places. This simplifies your cash flow and gives you more visibility and control of your revenue and expenses. Instead of logging into several accounts, you can review just 1—saving you time and frustration.

Don’t Let It Pile Up

Bookkeeping takes time, but you can spend less if you’re diligent and consistent with keeping your books in order. Staying on top of your bookkeeping by reconciling your expenses weekly will help to ensure accurate and clean financials. If you delay your entries and create a bookkeeping backlog, it will ultimately cost you more time than simply devoting 30 minutes to an hour each week for it.

Use Bookkeeping Software

If you’re looking for ways to reduce the time needed to maintain your books, using bookkeeping software is at the top of this list. 

Not long ago, small businesses had no other choice but to keep paper receipts and record financials in a physical book. This manual ledgering took time and required organization and attention to detail. 

Now, thanks to modern advancements, bookkeeping—among other accounting tasks—can be done on your computer, tablet, or mobile phone, with accounting software and applications like Lendio’s software.

Software can save you time by automating many bookkeeping tasks, like banking reconciliation and expense tracking. You can also take advantage of other features, like invoice creation, accounts receivable management, and reporting, which can save you time and provide you with additional insights to make better strategic decisions.

Small business owners are typically not bookkeeping or accounting experts. However, inaccurate, outdated, or sloppy financial records can make growing a business nearly impossible. Just because your business needs bookkeeping doesn’t mean it needs to take a lot of your time. Consider organizing your accounts correctly from the outset, staying on top of your entries, and using software or applications to streamline your bookkeeping—and if you’re still struggling, it may be time to hire an accountant or bookkeeper.