Small business accounting – Better late than never

Many small businesses don’t see the light of making it big. If we look into the failure of many of these companies, there is one common cause in irrespective of the industry and geography. Small business owners need to focus primarily on their core business activity.  That leaves very little time for a critical activity – small business accounting and bookkeeping.

Sustainable

A small business thrives well when customer demands peak and sales surge leaving owners and employees a happy bunch. Reality strikes when, goods have been sold on credits and the receivables have been due for a long time, proper payroll hasn’t been done and payroll expenses pile up and/or expenses haven’t been tracked resulting in mixing of personal and business expenses.

The above situations will certainly shake-up any business, however good they sell their products. This leads to the business becoming unsustainable after a year in to their business. They eventually die down as “one year wonders”.

“Do It Later”

Accounting and bookkeeping are to be done as part of your regular business for you to be completely confident about the health of the business. If you keep accounting and bookkeeping to be done at a later time, you will always be left with the element of doubt on the financial position of your business. Many small business owners see accounting and bookkeeping to be “over head” expenses, without being aware of the true potential of what it can do to your business. A business owner with a clear financial position of his/her business can take informed and sound decisions for the growth of his company. A business which has been paying the sales tax and the payroll taxes complying to the IRS and the state department will not be left with to pay for huge tax related penalties levied by those agencies.

 I am late. What should I do?

If you run a business and have left accounting and book-keeping to be done later, don’t worry you are not alone. It’s better to be late than never. Though it is going to cost you to bring your books to be up-to-date and pay taxes that you owe, it is better than not doing it now and pulling your business down altogether. Once you have your books up-to-date, ensure that they are updated regularly.

A clean and up-to-date set of books maintained by a professional bookkeeping company is guaranteed to take the business to great heights.