10. You have fallen asleep numerous times during the QuickBooks tutorial and have no idea what the man said about entering invoices to your clients, let alone how to set up a Chart of Accounts properly.
9. You’re six months into your business activity and just figured out QuickBooks will figure your sales tax liability for you so it won’t take you three hours to get it done but you have no idea where to start to take advantage of that feature.
8. You know there’s some way to reconcile your checking account within your accounting software but you have yet to explore that area and are, frankly, too scared of what the result might be. After all, if you can look at your checking account on-line, who needs QuickBooks to be up-to-date?
7. At the end of every month, there should be some way to tell if you have made money but, for the life of you, you have yet to figure it out. The report you pulled says you made more than you have left in the bank and you have no idea why!
6. You just hired your first employee and have made an agreement with them that they are going to pay their own taxes simply because you don’t have a clue where to start with the whole payroll thing!
5. You’re married and your spouse is supposed to be keeping track of the books but they won’t just sit down and get it done so you can make better decisions on how to spend your marketing budget based on what is making you money and what isn’t. This has led to multiple fights in your marriage and you think this ‘owning your own business thing’ maybe just isn’t for you!
4. You purchased QuickBooks at the beginning of your business and were all gung-ho to get in and make everything organized. However, the more you tried, the worse you seemed to have made it and now you’re embarrassed to even have a Professional Bookkeeper look at it let alone try to make sense of it all! You feel like you have to get it in order before you turn it over to someone else and you don’t know where to start so you’re completely stuck!
3. Every day, you come home after working and meeting with new clients for twelve hours only to have about three hours’ worth of ‘books’ to keep and you’re just too exhausted to even look at them. Days have stretched to weeks and weeks have stretched to months and now you’re so behind you don’t even know where to start!
2. You’ve made it to the end of your first year and have bank statements with explanations scrawled on them, an envelope of receipts and a list of about 20 questions to give to your CPA and you’re now dreading HIS bill!
1. And, the number one result of doing your own books is…………………………………………..you just got hit with a penalty from the state or the IRS for something you don’t even understand and when you talk to them, well, it’s all Greek to you so now you’re up at 2 am reading this list, checking off each result and frantically looking for the spy cam in your home office!
These are just ten of the scenarios entrepreneurs just like you have found after attempting to do their own accounting! It’s like everything else in a small company, we, as owners, always try to do everything ourselves figuring it’s saving us money because we aren’t having to pay someone else to do it. In the long run, when it comes to your accounting, you will find that you haven’t saved yourself anything, you’ve cost your company a lot in mistakes, time lost in the field and penalties, late fees or overdrafts that were unnecessary and easily avoidable!
Let’s face it, we can’t be EVERYTHING to our business. We can’t be the Marketing Division, IT department, Operations Manager, Bookkeeper, CPA and Chief Cook and Bottle Washer! At some point, we must give these responsibilities over to people who know what they are doing, can do it all in less than half the time it takes us to get the nerve up to try and can give us the result we are really looking for! In the long run, the business will run more efficiently and we will have the freedom we need to make decisions that really impact our bottom line. If you’re looking to do everything yourself to keep your bottom line from shrinking, then your perspective is too narrow and your vision has lost focus. The 818 Solution, Inc. was formed just for businesses like yours! We make it our business to give your business the tools you need to make valuable growth decisions! We can either train your ‘staff’ to get the most out of your accounting software or handle all of the books for you and give you reports that actually make sense. If you were able to check off MORE THAN THREE OF THE ABOVE ITEMS as real-life scenarios you have found yourself in, then give us a call and put us to work for you today!
Remember, the number ONE reason marriages fail is poor management of the MONEY! What do you think the number one reason businesses fail would be? DON’T BE ANOTHER STATISTIC!
