by Katie Borten
I am grateful to Sisarina’s year of intentionality since I probably owe my job to it. Sisarina was growing rapidly and needed to be intentional about organizing and managing the office and finances. So after an unconventional and even fun job application process, I joined the team in April of this year. My first order of business was to ensure our accounting was in order. As they say, accounting is the language of business, and even in the wonderland of creativity that Sisarina is, we still need to make sure the bank accounts reconcile and the cash flow is managed.
Like many small businesses, we use QuickBooks to manage our finances. Through trial and error and some classroom education, I've found some useful tricks and tips which have made my job easier and help to keep us on top of our financial picture.
1. Link your bank accounts to QuickBooks: QuickBooks will electronically download your transactions in any or all of your bank or credit card accounts on a daily basis. This feature really helps me stay on top of our banking activity and makes monthly reconciliations a breeze. One note of caution, certain charges may come through on QuickBooks multiple times. This doesn’t mean you have been charged twice, but there is a chance you might accept the charge into your register more than once.
I’ve also noticed that restaurant charges come through without the tip added first then later the correct amount is downloaded. I also link our credit cards to QuickBooks and when you reconcile your monthly bill, QuickBooks gives you the option of creating the bill automatically. Pretty sweet!
2. Importing/Exporting Lists and Reports: QuickBooks allows you to import client lists, vendors lists and more. Since our version of QuickBooks is a little limited in what we can import, I haven’t really explored this feature much. Exporting, however, is another story. QuickBooks reports can be somewhat customized, but I find exporting my report to Excel gives me greater opportunity to organize the information in the most useful way for us.
Creating one Excel spreadsheet with a page for each financial report makes analyzing your data much easier. I also love the ability to export our client list to Excel. It made updating our newsletter mailing list so efficient and effortless.
3. Take a Class: After a few months of learning on the job, I found it very helpful to take a class to really learn the ins and outs of QuickBooks. Not only did I learn a ton of tricks and short cuts, but in the process, I felt validated and reassured about the things that I was doing correctly. There are various options, but I decided to take a live two day workshop, “Mastering QuickBooks” put on by Real World Training www.realworldtraining.com. They are the only QuickBooks training company endorsed by Intuit, the makers of QuickBooks.
I found the in-class option very valuable, as I learned from both the instructor and the other attendees. It also enabled me to get all my specific questions answered. I would recommend knowing a bit about the program before taking a class. It definitely helped me absorb the information presented and made me walk out of there feeling much more savvy!
So don’t procrastinate in getting your finances in order. It might seem overwhelming, but there are great tools out there to help small businesses grow!
