Small Business Bookkeeping For Beginners – A chart of accounts (CoA) is a list of accounts used by a business or organization to define each category of items for which cash or its equivalent is spent or received. A CoA is used to organize all transactions and segregate expenses, income, assets and liabilities so that the company has a clear understanding of the financial health of the entity. A well-designed CoA can increase a company’s ability to benchmark, understand, and focus on key areas of business.
We often see small business owners make the mistake of creating a new account for every item they enter. This practice results in unnecessary variance (for example, accounts that are used for one month and then appear as 0.00 in subsequent months) and make it more difficult to obtain important information needed to achieve business goals.
Small Business Bookkeeping For Beginners
For example, imagine that a company created an expense account for the payment of a debt when that type of payment is actually in a liability account. It would be a serious mistake to record the payment as an expense to the company rather than a debt reduction.
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Whether we’re doing a QuickBooks review or setting up our accounting services for a client, the CoA is one of the first items we address so we can make sure our clients have a robust and organized digital “archive.” foundation of your financial well-being. Here, we provide tips for creating a strong CoA and a basic template that can help you!
Both Most companies use a systematic numbering system to assign a number to each account in the chart of accounts. These are often called account numbers or general ledger (GL) codes.
TIP: When adding accounts, remember to distribute the revised list to all employees who use this list to record transactions in the accounting system. Employees not directly involved in accounting will need a copy of the chart of accounts if they encode invoices or other transactions and need to indicate which account these transactions are recorded in.
Generally most GL accounts will have a main account (or group account) as well as sub accounts where all sub account balances are added to the main accounts.
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For example, a main account would be named “Cash and Cash Equivalents”, with the following subaccounts: main checking account, savings bank account, salary bank account, etc. In this design, the subaccounts will always have a full balance. Grouped to show the total of all bank accounts or total cash held by the business at any given time.
Tip: If you are setting up your chart of accounts manually, be sure to leave some space between accounts to add new accounts. For example, number your cash checking account 1000 and your accounts receivable account 1100. This gives you plenty of room to add more accounts to keep track of money.
How is the chart of accounts? Download the following Excel spreadsheet and use it as a template for your chart of accounts:
Tip: Not all small business accounts have the same graphic. The accounts you add to the chart of accounts depend on the type of business. For example, if you have a service business, you won’t have an inventory account. If you have a business that sells products, you will need a merchandise account.
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Need help? Contact us today and we can help you review or set up a chart of accounts!
The Coronavirus Relief, Relief and Security (CARES) Act, H.R. 748 just passed the Senate at the end of March 26, 2020. This $2 trillion economic relief package aims to stimulate the economy suffering from the impact of Covid-19. 19 Epidemics. The 880-page bill contains many provisions relating to small businesses and individual taxpayers. These key measures are summarized below.
The bill has not yet been approved in the House and sanctioned by the president and may undergo further changes.
Ky Nguyen, owner of the popular SA PA Vietnamese Kitchen joint, has this advice for other food entrepreneurs: Make sure you have a strong team behind you. When he opened his business in 2012, he made outsourcing the accounting part of the plan. With a growing business including a food truck, physical stores and catering services, his hands would be very full.
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One of the first things Tristan CPA did was to help reorganize the categories that SA PA was using for its financial statements, including the profit and loss account. This helped Ky get the most accurate and up-to-date information so he could make important business decisions along the way. He says, “It’s good to talk to someone else about all your financial information. And Tristan is great because he gets the deal. “
Running a restaurant is a tough business where profit margins are often very tight. With a strong team behind him and consistent and reliable accounting from Tristan CPA, Ky says he is proud to see SA PA turn a profit that supports its employees and business growth. He enjoys seeing happy customers eating his carefully prepared egg rolls, banh mi, pho, and delicious bowls, knowing he has a “good numbers guy” to help him with the food and his customers. Let’s focus on
Reliable and accurate accounting is the key to success for any business, yet many business owners struggle when it comes to deciding whether to hire an in-house accountant or a third-party accountant. Being able to clearly understand the advantages and disadvantages of each will help you decide which type of investment is best for your growing business. Below, we’ve outlined three common scenarios that business owners face with accounting.
Keep in mind that there is no one-size-fits-all answer to whether or not you should outsource your accounting work. Therefore, we strongly suggest that you carefully weigh your options and seek professional advice on your particular situation.
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Having an accountant on staff can provide greater day-to-day access and control, but these modest advantages can quickly be outweighed by cost and scenario flexibility. A full-time accountant requires the same competitive salary, recruiting costs, office space, equipment, supplies, software licenses and benefits as any other employee. In addition to being expensive, your accountant’s experience will be limited to your business, leaving you less exposed to various problems, and your ability to scale production with demand may be more limited than a third-party accountant.
Scenario II: You or an employee are doing, or plan to do, your own accounting work using simple software.
As a business owner, you might be thinking that you know your business best and can trust the software to take care of your accounting needs. It certainly seems like the quickest and most cost-effective way to get started, but the increased risk of costly mistakes won’t be worth it. Becoming an ‘accountant’ employee of a growing company is also dangerous for several reasons, the most dangerous of which is that the employee will not have the necessary accounting knowledge to adequately advise a growing or struggling company. Professional accountants are able to provide an unrivaled level of advice because they are able to see much more into your business than you think.
With advances in technology and the cloud, outsourced accounting has become a scalable and affordable option for many small to large businesses. A third-party company can provide the same ‘real-time’ access that an in-house accountant has, with the benefit of reducing the burden of manual reporting on in-house staff, eliminating costly errors.
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Each accounting firm has different rates, pricing policies, and customer experience, so be diligent in your research and speak directly with the firms. Does the accountant treat you like just another paycheck or do you feel like you’re part of a team that really cares about the success of your business? Here is a quick list of questions to ask:
These are just some of the things we offer at Tristan CPA. To learn more about how you can save money and still get a high quality bookkeeping service, contact us or get started with our Quickbooks review service today!
Enrollment is easy. We firmly believe that once you’ve experienced stress-free accounting, you won’t want to go back. As a business owner, you are responsible for keeping up to date on your business’s books. If you have up-to-date and accurate accounting records, your business will be on the road to success. But if you can’t focus on your accounting tasks, your business can quickly sink before it has a chance to grow.
Use these seven accounting tips to ensure your books are accurate from the moment your business was born.
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Combining expenses might not seem like a bad idea at first, but it can quickly become a headache for your small business.
Right from the start, you should set up a business bank account to keep personal and business expenses separate.
Your company can
