Here are some things to make the bookkeeping work go smoother and faster:

  1. Purchase and use preprinted checks and deposit slips. Even if you don’t write many checks or make many deposits, this saves time and makes your recordkeeping more efficient. I have a great sourse for reasonably priced forms. Call me for pricing and order information.
  2. Reconcile the bank accounts when the statements arrive in the mail. Don’t get behind.
  3. If the bookkeeper isn’t sure where to classify a transaction or if the transaction is complex, get help. The chances that this knowledge arrived with your birth certificate are remote at best. You might want to create an Suspense expense account to park  mystery transactions temporarily until you can ask your accountant or decide what to do with them.
  4. Keep track of petty cash regularly and don’t keep any more than you need on hand. Petty cash should be a separate bank account in QuickBooks and is normally used to pay small shipping and office expenses.
  5. If QuickBooks doesn’t do what your business requires well, find and use a third party application. Don’t complicate your life with convoluted work arounds that partially work.
  6. If you’re not a payroll expert, use a service. Call us for enrollment help  in QuickBooks Assisted Payroll.
  7. If you’re business requires job costing to know if you’re making money, do it right. Use a QuickBooks Payroll solution to get the information into QuickBooks correctly.
  8. Remember, if your company is an S corporation, the tax code requires shareholders that work in the business to take a “reasonable” W-2 salary prior to taking shareholder distributions.
  9. The QuickBooks help file is excellent. Press F1 to search the help file. The QuickBooks manual, if you have one, if virtually worthless. Recycle it.
  10. Backup daily or everytime you use QuickBooks. Make it a habit.
  11. File deposits records and bank reconciliations in one file. File disbursement receipts either in alphabetical files by vendor or chronologically in one file. I find it helpful to keep debit and credit card transactions in a separate file. Some vendors, like one you make a lot of product purchases from, may deserve their own file to make backtracking more efficient.
  12. The proper classification of workers, whether an employee or independant contractor, has become a big audit issue for the IRS. Mistakes are expensive. If you don’t know these rules, get help or read the information on www.irs.gov.