We’re all bombarded with statements from the bank, personal credit cards and business credit accounts.

We must keep receipts needed for tax purposes, and then there’s invoicing, accounts payable, reconciling and generating end of month, quarterly and end-of-year financial reports.

* How much time do you spend on bookkeeping activities?
* How much is your time worth?
* Do you have a clear understanding of accounting?
* What is a journal entry?
* Do you know all the ins and outs of your accounting software?
* Do you actually enjoy bookkeeping?

It makes sound business sense to pay someone else (at a much lower rate than your marketing time is worth) to provide bookkeeping services for your business.

I’ve seen many business owners continue to struggle in this area. Some people are told to save everything, so that’s exactly what they do. They then show up at my office with a grocery bag containing all their receipts. What a disaster!

Keeping your accounts in order is much easier if you consistently manage the process on a weekly, or monthly basis rather than leaving it to the end of the year.

Now, with so many transactions being captured through on-line banking, it’s easy to delegate and monitor accounting duties.

“As a rule, we find what we look for; we achieve what we get ready for”
James Cash Penney

The solution

Get organized and find a virtual bookkeeper.
Here’s my system:

1. Since I want to know where my money goes every month, I save all my receipts.

2. I have two envelopes on my desk, one for personal items, and the other for business. I label the envelopes with the months when the transactions took place.

3. Once the month is over, I seal the envelopes and send them to a private clearing house for scanning

Within two to three days, I will receive a confirmation e-mail. This tells me that the scanned receipts are now available as a CSV file. The scanning clearing house also returns my original documents and includes a postage paid envelope for my next shipment.

I then send a copy of the confirmation message to my virtual bookkeeper. I can either e-mail a PDF statement, or scan my bank, credit card, and any other statements at the end of the month.

My bookkeeper imports and enters all of the transactions into our online version of QuickBooks. If my virtual bookkeeper needs added information about a particular transaction, she just logs in to view the details of my scanned receipts.

Once everything has been settled, we have a 15 to 20 minute conference call to discuss transactions that needs additional clarification. This process is far more flexible and superior compared to a bookkeeper that drives to our office to collect everything, and then drives back.