Changing the way your small business does something is stressful. Difficult. Time-consuming. But you had good reasons for changing your financial management from a manual, paper-based process to a cloud-based one. You knew that your company would eventually benefit from this complex switch eventually, but wondered how long it would take to get there \u2013 and if you could even do it.<\/p>\n
You can, if you prepare for the transition. First, you need to make a commitment to see it through. <\/strong>Back in the days when businesses had no choice but to pay hundreds of dollars for desktop accounting software, a lot of those big boxes gathered dust on shelves. It\u2019s even easier to bail from a cloud-based accounting application because you\u2019re only out the subscription fees for a month or two, but it will leave a bad taste in your mouth for online accounting in general. So don\u2019t decide until you\u2019re sure you can follow through.<\/p>\n Second, create a detailed document that outlines all of the accounting-related tasks that you and\/or your staff do and how you do them<\/strong>. For example: Paper bills come in and are opened by X. They\u2019re stored in a folder in order of due date. Payment deadline is written on wall calendar, and checks are written and mailed a week ahead of due date. <\/em>You shouldn\u2019t even start doing research until you know what features you\u2019ll need.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a good idea, too, to write down the problems you experience with your current system<\/strong> (there must be some or you wouldn\u2019t be looking for a different accounting method). Are you having trouble, for example:<\/p>\n This should go without saying, but get input from everyone in your company who \u201ctouches\u201d your bookkeeping<\/strong>. Do you have a shipping person or department? Customer service personnel who sometimes take orders? A salesperson or team? Get their wish lists, too, in terms of their current interaction with accounting and how it could be improved.<\/p>\n If you think your company will grow in the next year or two, determine what kind of financial tools you\u2019ll need to support anticipated business development<\/strong>.<\/p>\n You get the idea. Think about financial policies and procedures that you can\u2019t put into place because you don\u2019t know how they work, you don\u2019t have time to figure them out, and\/or the bookkeeping involved is too much to take on in your current manual system.<\/p>\n Two Caveats<\/strong><\/p>\n If you complete all of these steps, you should have a fairly good idea of what you need in a cloud-based accounting application. You should know a couple of things before you start looking around for the right solution, though. First, you\u2019re highly unlikely to find a perfect fit, a website that does everything you\u2019ll need in the foreseeable future and no more.<\/p>\n State-of-the-art financial websites provide the basic tools required to track income and expenses and inventory items. They include record and transaction form templates to support those activities. They also provide integrated add-ons so that if they lack features in an area that\u2019s important to you, it\u2019s easy to extend them.<\/p>\n Second, you will have to learn new ways of doing things, and you can\u2019t do them halfway. If you create invoices and receive payments online but continue to stuff checks in envelopes to pay bills, you won\u2019t get the comprehensive overview of your finances that web-based solutions provide \u2013 which is probably one of the reasons why you\u2019re changing your accounting method.<\/p>\n Making It Work<\/strong><\/p>\n Choosing the right site, making the transition to online from paper, learning to analyze the information you\u2019ll be getting \u2013 all of these steps can<\/em> be taken without professional assistance, depending on your financial acumen and your familiarity with new technology. Doing this on your own, though, will cause disruption, frustration, unnecessary time-wasting, and may affect your accounting workflow to the point where your financial health is threatened.<\/p>\n So if you said Yes to step one, if you\u2019re committed to making this critical transition successfully, let a financial professional assist you. <\/strong>He or she can do a lot or a little to help you not only get online and get organized, but to turn this new insight you\u2019ll be getting into smart business decisions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Changing the way your small business does something is stressful. Difficult. Time-consuming. But you had good reasons for changing your\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1751,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tax-prep-and-planning"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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