Doing your own bookkeeping? A Melbourne bookkeeper explains 4 problems small business owners face!

June 21, 2018

If you’re a small business owner, chances are you do your own books.

Whether you know it or not, grappling with these bookkeeping problems day-in, day-out can be costly and detrimental.

Melbourne bookkeeper

Not only can it take up hours of your time and means there’s less time to focus on other areas of your business, but it also leads to bookkeeping errors, which can have huge impacts on your business!

Maximum Business Solutions is a Melbourne bookkeeper uncovering some of the biggest bookkeeping problems many small business owners run into. More importantly, we’ll go over how enlisting the support of a bookkeeper can help you avoid them!

Problem #1: you make mistakes when you don’t have a bookkeeper

One of the biggest threats against your small business are financial statements laden with errors.

Any mistakes in your financials could be disastrous. The numbers are how you make decisions for your business.

Bookkeeping that’s plain wrong can often lead to poor choices.

And that often leads to loss.

Another consequence is heavy penalties. As of writing, the end of the financial year is almost upon us. That means one thing: taxes!

Not only is tax accounting a headache but do it wrong and you could be heavily penalised.

Both of these are traps you can’t afford to fall into, as this could spell out major trouble for your business.

If you are in charge of your own bookkeeping or someone in your staff is, perhaps it’s time to look into hiring a professional bookkeeper in Melbourne to ensure you remain compliant not only at tax time, but year-round.

Not only does the knowledge and expertise of a dedicated bookkeeper protect you from mistakes, but it also gives you your time back. Instead of spending hours going over invoices and receipts, you can focus on what you do best: running and growing your business!

Problem #2: mixing personal and business finances

They say you should never mix business with pleasure.

We’d like to extend that saying by saying you should never mix your personal life with your business, period!

One of the major boo boos that small business owners often make is not knowing when to draw the line between personal and business spending.

Not only does this make it hard to figure out your business’ financial performance, but it can also muddy the waters when it comes time to budget your personal money too!

While it’s possible to work around this, that takes extra time. Can you really afford to take out even more time separating your business and private finances?

Another thing to remember when it comes to your personal and business finances is that you should avoid covering any expenses with your own money (that means no “borrowing” money from yourself!)

Doing so could affect the true financial standing of your small business, making it hard to see how you’re really performing. Not to mention, that money is coming directly out of your bank account.

Bookkeeping Services

Problem #3: failing to use the right bookkeeping tools

As with many other aspects of business, bookkeeping is going digital. Many businesses are even taking their bookkeeping to the cloud.

You heard it here first, the days of manual and traditional bookkeeping are numbered (if you’ll pardon the pun!)

If you haven’t switched to using the right bookkeeping software, you could be making a big mistake. While manual bookkeeping is certainly feasible, it’s completely outclassed by cloud bookkeeping in almost every way:

  • Automated data entry
  • Syncs with your different accounts
  • Off-site backups
  • Integrates with other software

All of these make cloud bookkeeping faster, more convenient and most importantly, easier.

It doesn’t end there. Making the switch to bookkeeping software is the first step… ensuring you’re using one that is right for your business is the next one.

There are many options in the market today, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Choosing the wrong one can lead to errors and make your bookkeeping needlessly difficult.

Luckily, we’ve gone through all of them and picked out two leading contenders suitable for any small business: MYOB and Xero.

Click here to learn more about the benefits of taking your business finances to the cloud, and how a Melbourne bookkeeper can help you get started!

Problem #4: without a bookkeeper, it’s easy to draw the wrong conclusions

When you get your hands on your business’ financial information – be it reports, statements and what not – you have a powerful decision-making tool… provided you understand what they are trying to tell you!

Financial reports and statements are key to making informed business decisions. However, not everybody has a head for numbers. There’s nothing wrong with that – some people simply aren’t wired to read bookkeeping reports.

If the reports are too difficult to interpret or give you a headache just looking at them, let a Melbourne bookkeeper like Maximum Business Solutions help you!

Bookkeeper in Melbourne

Are you a small business owner looking for solutions to your bookkeeping problems?

Let a Melbourne bookkeeper help you out!

Just like large scale businesses, small businesses have their share of bookkeeping problems. In fact, many small business owners have it worse – not being able to afford an in-house bookie means many business owners take on bookkeeping by themselves.

Oftentimes, that leads to problems like the four listed above.

If you’re currently grappling with these problems, a bookkeeper in Melbourne can help address these problems and get your business back on track!

That’s where Maximum Business Solutions comes in. We provide a range of bookkeeping services, allowing us to meet our clients’ bookkeeping needs and requirements.

If you are interested to find out more about how Maximum Business Solutions can help your small business, don’t hesitate to give us a call on (03) 9589 0128. Alternatively, fill in this form and we’ll be in touch to arrange a catch-up.