Business accounting software can be and should be the growth engine of your company. But, if it’s not serving as your business’ go-to source for instant access to your business’ past, present, and future sales, customers, inventory (if applicable), profit, and growth trajectory, it’s either not the best fit for your company or best practices, features, and functions are not being correctly or fully applied – or a mix of both.
Finding out the true cause of underutilizing business accounting software starts by going back to the fundamentals, beginning with bookkeeping best practices, which is where this first segment in JCS’ “Best Practices” series begins.
Bookkeeping Best Practices
The impact of the most basic to the most sophisticated, cloud-based, customizable accounting software is only as powerful as the everyday bookkeeping practices of those who are responsible for data entry and information management operations; this includes the business owner or CEO. After all, these practices are the basis for better management and better decisions.
Through various mediums, Accounting Business Solutions by JCS is rolling out tutorials, tips and insight on how to acquire and apply bookkeeping best practices to sharpen (or resharpen) bookkeepers’, accountants’, and even CEOs’ and business owners’ bookkeeping skills and awareness of how important accounting and bookkeeping best practices are to the business’ overall financial health.
These Bookkeeping Best practices include the following: simple steps for verifying the accounting system is reconciled; posting correctly to consistently give accurate visibility of finances, operations, sales, and inventory (when applicable); debits and credits made easy; month-end, quarter-end, and year-end closes.
Each of these steps are vital for optimal bookkeeping, accounting and growth. Let’s look a little closer at a couple of them to get a better idea of the importance and relevance of learning – or revisiting – bookkeeping best practices.
Posting Correctly
Tracking balances – for liabilities, profits, or expenses – is a regular practice of every company. But, to do it correctly, all transactions from all accounts need to be organized; that’s how a company sees where their money has come and gone. Posting enables the bookkeeper, accountant or owner-operator to organize their data and help track their budgets and/or financial statements in an accounting system.
Posting best practices include fully understanding what posting in accounting means, and the optimal steps involved in posting transaction entries.
Debits & Credits Made Easy
As the double-entry accounting foundation, debits and credits reveal amounts that are moving in and out of the general-ledger accounts of the company. Each transaction must have at least one credit and one debit that are equal. When that’s true for every transaction, a company can consider its books in balance. When the books aren’t in balance, the company cannot create an accurate balance sheet, income statement, or any other financial document.
Correctly and easily managing debits and credits is critical, and without best practices this function can cause perpetual errors that are time-consuming and difficult to fix.
Accounting Software Selection and Bookkeeping Best Practices
As you probably know, there is a correlation between selecting the best accounting software for your business and efficiently, routinely acquiring and applying bookkeeping best practices. Accounting Business Solutions by JCS provides the bridge between the two by working with you to define your business and identify your specific challenges, needs, and objectives. This basic information provides the basis for identifying the best accounting software for your company; software that will enable not only bookkeeping best practices but also facilitate your productivity, profitability, and growth.
To benefit from JCS’ Best Practices initiatives, please call (800) 475-1047 or complete and submit the Contact form included on this site.