Tax season is coming. Right now, your bookkeeping or accounting team is preparing invoices to present to the IRS in the upcoming months. These invoices include your last year's revenue and different expenses your company had throughout the year. If your company does not have an accountant or bookkeeping services, there are a few tasks you will need to do before April comes.
In this article, you will learn essential bookkeeping services your eCommerce company should have, plus a solution to forget about this daunting task. If you decide to do this by yourself, you need to have your books balanced between revenue and expenses. If you do not, you might want to consider hiring a virtual bookkeeper for the next few months.
Essential Bookkeeping Services
Taxes
Bookkeepers are responsible for noting all tax dates and preparing accounting books before starting tax season. Additionally, bookkeepers should help accountants with the correct information & support during the process. Their knowledge of financial records and ability to stay on top of deadlines will be instrumental in easing the workload of accountants.
Daily Transactions
Just as a CTA buttons measures the amount of clicks a marketing campaigns has, a bookkeeper can easily summarise the transactions that have come into the business daily. If you have accounting software and can update through daily automatic bank feeds, this can be helpful for your bookkeeper to use on a daily basis. Bookkeepers have a lot of different responsibilities in a small business, but the central pillar of their job is to organize, record, and display financial transactions.
Updates and Security
Automated accounting operations are standard these days, which means you need to keep accounting software updated to prevent your files from being undermined by hackers. By following the basic cybersecurity principles, bookkeepers can ensure their company's data is well protected. They will never disclose passwords to unauthorized people, update antivirus software when necessary, and change their passwords regularly.
Cash Flow
One of the essential tasks for a bookkeeper is to keep an eye on how much money the company has every day. They can do this by measuring how much they're bringing in against how much the company is spending on suppliers and other general expenses. If there's not enough, your bookkeeper will take action or provide advice, so you don't go over budget.
Invoices
Preparing invoices and collecting money can be a time-consuming process. As a result, having a qualified bookkeeper around to ensure everything is done correctly, from the time someone writes an invoice to ensure that late payments from clients are chased, is essential.
Stock Items
In addition to keeping track of the company's money flow, bookkeepers can also register any inventory movements you have at any given time. These movements include purchases, supplies, and any extra stock in your warehouse. Bookkeepers will record this movement in the ledger with its respective monetary value and calculate your stock's worth. This method can also help you apply discounts to your products during holiday seasons without losing much revenue.
Accounts Payable Ledger
As bookkeepers take care of your business, they can also help with payments on behalf of your company. By giving them a little monetary freedom, they can also find good deals regarding suppliers' expenses and even use systems that will allow them to pay your employees regularly.
Payroll
The last of the essential bookkeeping services in this list is payroll. By coordinating with the HR department, bookkeepers can care for your employees by providing their respective pay. Depending on your state, you might have to go through a few legal procedures for this to happen. Whether they prepare the payroll every month or every 14 days, payroll accounts need to be in check, so your employees receive their salary on time.
Essential Bookkeeping Services Solutions: Virtual Bookkeeping Assistants
A virtual bookkeeping assistant can help you with many tasks you haven't even considered, and right now, the beginning of the year is the perfect time to hire one. If you start delegating additional work to your current employees, they will be overwhelmed and underperform in their regular tasks. Having a virtual bookkeeper in your company will eliminate all the extra work your regular employees have to handle. And, with the VA's expertise, you will have no problem with your tax declarations for this year.
Virtual assistants can help you increase your ROI and make your business run much more efficiently. This liberty allows you to free up more time to focus on other essential aspects of your company, like customer service and increasing sales. Loyal customers will also be happy to buy over time, which will keep them engaged with your company and spread the word about it.
If you want to know more about how you can save money with a virtual assistant, you can check this article about bookkeeping salaries and how to spend less from budget towards a bookkeeper.