Knowing your financial situation is critical to every business, but as a small business your cash flow in and out can be make or break! Daily bookkeeping is a simple way to give you clear, accurate insight when you need it.
When you need to make a decision on a big spend you’ll know whether it’s a wise move, and be able to weigh up any risks right away.
Here are a few tips from Lead Accountant Jason Brunton:
- Use auto forward rules on your inbox: One of the best features ReceiptBank has is the unique ‘email in address’. Most suppliers will be happy to email you a copy of your invoices: so why not set up specific rules so they’re automatically forwarded to ReceiptBank? This makes things easier and quicker for you and means you’re less likely to be chased for missing paperwork.
- Use Invoice Fetch: This allows ReceiptBank to connect with a supplier’s online portal and it will ‘fetch’ new invoices every day. There are over 1300 suppliers already partnered with ReceiptBank and if one of your suppliers isn’t listed you can ask them to consider setting up a connection.
- Consider switching bank accounts: If you want live day to day information it’s important that your bank account is partnered with Xero and has direct feeds available. If you’re just starting to scale up it may be the best time to do this. View the list of banks that offer open banking via Xero.
- Always ask for a VAT receipt: If you’re incurring expenses that are whole and exclusively for the business you may be able to claim back some VAT. We often ask clients for any VAT receipts (all VAT registered businesses are required to give you one by law, don’t be shy about it!).
- Use the ReceiptBank app: The quickest way to capture day to day receipts is with the app: take a photo as soon as you receive it, add a little comment to help us allocate the cost and then you can forget about it. More tips here.
- Consider if you really need ReceiptBank expense reports: These are a great feature as they make reimbursing employees easier than ever, but do you really need them? If these are produced on a monthly basis then the data in Xero will only be as up to date as they are. For example if an employee doesn’t add the receipts/invoices right away they could be missed off the report until the next month. If they use one of the new prepaid card alternatives that link to Xero (like Soldo or Pleo) you’d have clear tracking. As a director, it’s much easier to track the money owed to you if you transfer round amounts to and from the company business account.
- Get some help from an employee: There are many access levels in Xero and ReceiptBank, if you have a trusted employee you could have them mark items as paid or provide us with missing info.
- Separate bank accounts: If your reporting needs are slightly complicated – such as splitting out different revenue streams or expenses, it can cause a lot of queries. If you had a separate bank account for all your payroll costs, that would make it quicker for us to reconcile and give us more time to advise and add value.
- Respond to daily missing paperwork: If we ask you for missing paperwork please send over what you have as soon as possible. If you don’t have it, just drop us a note so we can continue with the rest of the reconciliation.
If you need a run through of ReceiptBank or have questions about your daily bookkeeping ask us! We’ve lots of resources to help!
