Bookkeeping: Dusty ledgers and laborious tasks come to mind just from the words themselves. Despite its image as a dry subject, according to best practices must be followed by your company from the beginning. This must be stressed more.

In actuality, poor financial management is often claimed as a cause of company failure: Cash flow was the No. 2 reason some of those small firms died, coming in second only to companies attempting to sell a product that their target market didn’t need, according to significant research by CB Insights of 101 failed startups.

So, whether you are a bootstrapped startup or have obtained investment, pay careful attention to actively managing the ebbs and flows of your company’s cash. Success in the long and short terms both need that level of focus.

Fortunately, following accounting best practices isn’t as difficult or time-consuming as it formerly was. As a founder over the last ten years, I have learned about a variety of technologies that may assist in guaranteeing that both mine and your firm keep an eye on the bottom line. Here are five particularly effective ones that small firms may utilize to enhance their accounting procedures and guarantee the integrity of their financials.

• Siftery

Numerous third-party applications are used by many internet firms to power and automate their operations. It seems to sense that there are so many tools available that are designed to keep your company running smoothly. Although many SaaS products are well worth the monthly subscription fees, it is more challenging to keep track of your software expenditures as your organization expands.

A comprehensive expense-tracking programme like Siftery makes it simple to compute and optimize your monthly or yearly spending. Expensify QuickBooks Integration connectivity is also provided, which streamlines the tracking procedure.

Siftery, however, does more than keep track of how much money your company spends on software. Siftery records more than 42,000 applications and how more than 840,000 businesses use them to fuel their software recommendation engine, claims CMO Gerry Giacoman Colyer. Siftery makes it simple to identify SaaS applications that support your company’s operations and helps you save money by in advance arranging discounts for Siftery customers. Siftery will assist you in many ways to maximize your SaaS investment.

• Humanity

Tracking team expenses and time, particularly for remote teams, is a significant difficulty for entrepreneurs. A time-tracking and staff scheduling tool called Humanity automates a laborious procedure that was previously manual.

Team members may check in to see their schedules and even switch shifts with other workers anywhere in the world. The simple, cloud-based interface eliminates the typical hassle associated with intricate systems for monitoring and deducting the hours worked by remote workers by giving managers and staff access to a calendar view.

From an accounting standpoint, Humanity assists in making sure that your employees’ timesheets are correct and that you aren’t overpaying your employees. Humanity provides QuickBooks connectivity, similar to Siftery, to make workforce management simpler to integrate with your general accountancy procedures.

• QuickBooks

I highly urge all firms, particularly digital ones, to integrate two apps into their daily operations. One is Google Analytics, which tracks the performance of your website and the sources of visitors. QuickBooks is the alternative.  

Although there are numerous software choices, QuickBooks is the best in terms of functionality and compatibility. With good cause, QuickBooks has established itself as the industry standard. To begin with, it easily interacts with your bank accounts, removing most of the work required to maintain your data accurate and up to date. Additionally, QuickBooks is hosted in the cloud, making it simple to manage your books from any computer or location.  

With its reporting and cash-flow management features, you can get a quick overview of how your company is doing financially and use that information to anticipate and prepare for any gaps. Soli and verifiable financials are a need if you ever need to sell your company or look for further capital. You will have access to such financials if you utilize QuickBooks carefully.

• Expensify

Thankfully, the days of keeping your expense receipts in a shoebox until taxi time are passed. You can categorize receipts by taking a picture of them using Expensify, which has a significant QuickBooks connection like the other applications on our list. QuickBooks receives automated uploads from Expensify.

Expensify becomes even more helpful if your team members are obliged to submit invoices for payment. It helps to ensure the correctness of each transaction by spotting duplicate receipts and calculating actual foreign currency rates.

ACH immediately compensates the team member within 24 hours after accepting an expenditure report. The expense reporting process is simplified with Expensify for both management and workers. Expensify can save you a tonne of time and money even if you work for yourself. Businesses that used Expensify had an ROI of 598 percent, according to Forrester’s 2017 Total Economic Impact Report.

• Fundbox

Even if you analyze and plan your firm finances meticulously, it’s uncommon that your startup won’t sometimes run into a short-term cash flow problem. In this situation, Fundbox is useful.

Fundbox integrates with QuickBooks (or another accounting programme) to access your company’s creditworthiness. Then, Fundbox provides financing choices to provide American-based firms with finance. These alternatives include invoice finance, which means that Fundbox will give you a cash advance for bills that are still unpaid by your clients, as well as a revolving line of credit of up to $100,000 that your company repays over a 12- or 24-week period.

Weekly fees and installment payments are taken out of your bank account. Two of the main benefits of Fundbox are that, unlike a standard small business loan from a bank, you won’t have to wait around for a long time or fill out a tonne of paperwork, and the financing costs are often significantly cheaper than alternatives like credit cards.

Giving Fundbox access to your bank or QuickBooks account will enable you to get a response in as little as three minutes. If you are accepted, the money may be yours as soon as the next business day.

Conclusion

Remember to value the significance of implementing accounting best practices for your company from the outset, regardless of your business. Practical accounting and cash-flow management frameworks will become essential to your company’s capacity to expand as it develops and takes more time. At first, this may not seem the most important thing to focus on when starting a business.