Accurate and timely bookkeeping will provide a sound basis for your company. Keeping orderly business records will help to maintain healthy operations and provide accurate financial reports when required. As HMRC carries out regular inspections of business records, timely management could also prevent the company incurring a penalty.
Although the thought of bookkeeping can be daunting, it is just a matter of maintaining a record of income and expenditure of your company, along with keeping an audit trail so that you can look back at previous years’ records.
Dealing with your business records on a regular basis
Managing the company records is a time-consuming but essential task that has to be carried out on a regular basis. It may be tempting to leave the invoices and receipts to pile up until you have more time, but that day will never arrive. Dealing with invoices and other records on a regular basis will reduce the likelihood of errors and lost invoices. Get into the habit of dealing with the paperwork each day, numbering invoices and filing documents away immediately to keep them safe. Timely bookkeeping practices will help you to stay ahead of your cash flow and be able to prepare accurate finance reports.
Outsourcing
If you are struggling to stay in control of the record keeping, consider an accountancy outsourcing service, which will save valuable resources in the long term. Although this may seem like an unnecessary expense, as you could do the books yourself, be realistic about the amount of work you are already juggling and don’t risk falling behind with administration. Accurate records will provide you with all the information you may require about your business finances, and missing invoices or other problems could cause you to make bad decisions based on incorrect information.
Recording the small items
Make it a habit to record smaller items of expenditure so that, at the end of the year, you know exactly how much you have spent in the course of your daily duties and can claim an accurate figure of expenditure. Have a box that you can put receipts into on the same day as they were incurred, so that you don’t lose them. Very often, receipts become lost and you can end up not claiming as much as you should. If possible, pay for all expenditure with a debit or credit card, so that you have electronic proof of purchase.
If you would like to know more about how accurate business records can help you, give us a call today.