Ask our small business bookkeepers about invoicing and reconciliation services

What’s your New Year’s resolution?

Is it to go to the gym more? Learn a new language? Spend more time with your family?

Whatever it is, you’ll need time.

Unfortunately for small business owners like yourself, time is a resource that’s often in short supply!

One of the biggest culprits? Business administration tasks such as bookkeeping – in particular, invoicing and reconciliations.

Issues with these two crucial bookkeeping tasks can suck up your time and throw your small business bookkeeping way out of whack – what’s more, they’re also extremely common!

How can you avoid issues with both of these important bookkeeping tasks? And more importantly, how can our small business bookkeepers in Melbourne help?

The importance of invoicing, and why so many businesses get it wrong

Invoicing is a crucial part of your payment collection process, as well as ensuring that you’re up-to-date with your liabilities.

However, it can also be a tedious and time-consuming task – especially if you’re still doing it on your own.

It’s easy for an invoice to be overlooked, or filled in incorrectly if you aren’t paying attention. 

When many of our clients come to us, we notice that they are often still manually invoicing their customers. Some aren’t even using Excel, instead using a hand calculator and a Word document to create and keep track of invoices.

Needless to say, this doesn’t lend itself to speed or accuracy!

Invoicing mistakes

Any mistake with your invoices (whether it’s for a purchase or sale) can throw your finances for a loop. It can lead to you falling behind on your payments, or even worse, negatively impacting your cash flow.

One particularly concerning issue is the potential for losing track of what’s owed to you. While you may have made a sale, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything until it’s paid and the cash lands in your account.

If enough invoices are missed, you may find your cash flow situation looking dire!

Reconciliation, explained

Reconciliation (noun): the process of making two opposite beliefs, ideas, or situations agree.

When it comes to accounting and bookkeeping specifically, reconciliation refers to making corrections between two different statements or accounts.

For most business owners, they only perform a reconciliation when their quarterly bank statements come in.

The purpose of bank reconciliations is simple: since the bank has the most accurate records of your finances, you should compare your internal bookkeeping to your bank statements to ensure that your bookkeeping and accounting are accurate.

During a bank reconciliation, you will have to go through your bank statement with a fine-tooth comb, identifying contradictions between it ant your internal bookkeeping.

If anything’s off, you correct your own documents (or in rare cases of the bank making a mistake, make a call to your bank) – you reconcile the difference.

Bank reconciliation mistakes

As with all bookkeeping practices, it’s easy to make a mistake when you do your own bank reconciliation. For example:

• Your bookkeeping system may not keep enough information to make a correction
• Entries may have been missed, and you may not remember the details well enough
• You could simply make a calculation error

All of these have the potential to either leave you with inaccurate records, or to suck up hours of your time as you crawl through your statements, picking your brain for the details.

Needless to say, neither of these outcomes are exactly ideal!

How a small business bookkeeper can help

Small business bookkeepers like ourselves deal with these sorts of documents and bookkeeping tasks on a daily basis. We have the skills, training and tools needed to perform these tasks with maximum efficiency and accuracy.

In addition to cleaning up your accounts (including following up late debts), your bookkeeper can also look after invoicing for you going forward.

Not only is this more accurate – it also ensures that you won’t have to spend hours of your time doing it yourself!

We here at Maximum Business Solutions understand how tight time can be for business owners like yourself. Between planning for the future, looking after inventory and running the business itself, it’s little wonder business owners are the busiest people around.

Our small business bookkeepers in Melbourne can take all that work off your hands, leaving you with more time to do the things that only you can do.

Invoicing and reconciliations

Don’t have enough time to do your own bank reconciliation? Struggling to keep track of all your invoices? Let a small business bookkeeper take care of it.

On top of giving you your time back, you’ll also won’t have to worry about missing a payment or debt collection.

Better yet, cloud bookkeeping also completely protects you from ever finding yourself in a position where your bank account and your internal bookkeeping don’t line up!

Cloud bookkeeping

Did you know? There’s a way to make invoicing easier than ever before – yep, you heard us right, even easier than handing it off to a small business bookkeeper!

Cloud bookkeeping is taking the bookkeeping world by storm. And frankly, it’s no surprise, given how much time and work it can save you.

That’s because cloud bookkeeping can automate large chunks of your small business bookkeeping – just imagine, invoices that write themselves… literally!

Cloud bookkeeping like Xero, QuickBooks and MYOB integrate with your POS, inventory and payroll systems, as well as your bank accounts.

The moment any of these are updated, the information will automatically be transferred to your bookkeeping software, with reports automatically generated. All you need to do is check it at the end of every week (or fortnight, or month, depending on your business!)

Cloud bookkeeping integration and training

Making the transition to the cloud can be intimidating. While cloud bookkeeping systems are extremely intuitive, the initial jump can be a bit much for some.

Not to mention, what happens to your current records?

Luckily, our small business bookkeepers can help on both fronts.

We’ll migrate your current records over to your new cloud bookkeeping system, ensuring continuity and ensuring that no data is lost in the process.

We will also provide training and support as long as you need it – if you’re having trouble at any point, just give us a ring and we’ll help you out!

Get your bookkeeping in order

Call our small business bookkeepers in Melbourne

Bookkeeping is the lifeblood of any small business – invoicing and reconciliations in particular are especially important.

Ensure both of these vital bookkeeping processes are accurate, timely and free of mistakes by engaging our small business accountants in Melbourne.

Whether it’s looking after your invoicing and reconciliations, taking over your bookkeeping altogether or something as simple as a one-off accounts clean-up, our team can help.

Our specialty is cloud bookkeeping. In addition to helping you out of a bookkeeping bind, we can make your bookkeeping dramatically easier for the rest of your time in business.

Find out how our small business bookkeepers can help you – give us a call today on (03) 9589 0128 or click here to contact us online.