Accounting & Bookkeeping

If you dread bookkeeping but feel it’s not worth outsourcing, you’re not alone. Many entrepreneurs successfully handle their own financial books. The good news is that when you learn how to keep books for small business, it makes important decisions easier and minimizes preventable financial mistakes. Good bookkeeping—that is, the record keeping of your business’s […]

Small business owners spend too much time on their accounting and not enough growing their own businesses. Part of the issue is that the accounting and bookkeeping methods we use today are archaic — literally. In 1458, Italian merchant Benedetto Cotrugli standardized the practice of bookkeeping and accounting with the use of paper journals and […]

Many experts believe (and vocally declare) that every business needs a bookkeeper. We disagree. Technology’s capabilities have surpassed the need for human involvement in all but the most complex business accounting tasks. So, why do small businesses still phone bookkeepers to help them get organized and compliant? Because they’re in the dark, wondering, “What does […]

Warren Buffet famously says that “Accounting is the language of business.” The very best way to learn the language of your business — that is, accounting — is to hire an expert to both help and teach you. If you’re wondering how much does an accountant cost, though? remember, it’ll cost you to continue operating […]

Businesses never start out disorganized. Chaotic processes and records become that way over time. No matter how long it took for your accounting books to go from tidy to disordered, messy recordkeeping affects your company’s vitality. Research from office supply retailer Staples found that 53% of thriving or surviving businesses stated they had very organized […]

The 21st-century economy moves in real time. Why, then, do you still have to wait until the end of the month to see how your business’s finances are doing? The answer is, you don’t. Bank reconciliation is the act of matching and validating your bank’s transactions against those in your internal ledger. The only reason […]

There’s a difference between what you know about your business’s finances and what your bank knows. Balancing out the difference is a process called “transaction reconciliation.” Doing it manually sucks time, energy, and momentum out of your day-to-day. But with Neat, you can reclaim that precious time and energy by automating the task. The many […]

More than three-quarters (78%) of small business owners haven’t completed any formal business training. But 83% of them consider themselves knowledgeable, very knowledgeable, or extremely knowledgeable when it comes to accounting and finance. Are leaders overestimating their savvy? Absolutely, says CPA Courtney Thayer. “Business owners often feel knowledgeable about their finances just because they get […]

Research from Bank of America tells us that of all the businesses that conduct yearly cash flow analyses and forecasts, only 36% succeed. That number jumps to 80% for companies that perform this exercise monthly. That begs the question: If performing a monthly cash flow analysis more than doubles a company’s chance of survival, why […]

What’s the only thing worse than feeling overwhelmed by the task of bookkeeping? Feeling overwhelmed by the bookkeeping software that’s supposed to make that overwhelmed feeling go away. And to think software was supposed to be the simpler, more user-friendly alternative to spreadsheets. You first chose a program to eliminate confusion, not add more. Sadly […]