When you outsource your finance function to us, we will take on all of your bookkeeping. Along with an account manager (some of whom do your bookkeeping as well), you'll be assigned a bookkeeper. This person will take responsibility for getting your receipts, reconciling your bank account and chasing you for missing receipts.
Bookkeeping
Based in Farnham
Bank Reconciliations
Ensuring that you have up to date lists of Debtors and Creditors, and up to date financial reports, we’ll login to your accounting software regularly and reconcile your bank transactions so you can rely on the accuracy of the information.
Supplier Payments
Once your supplier invoices are in your accounting software, they need to be paid. We use our experience and partnership with effective payable software to manage your supplier payments. This gets you the best possible payment terms. All you need to do is log in to your account to approve the payment!
Sales Invoicing
Ensuring you get paid on time starts with a decent invoice procedure. We can get to grips with your invoicing procedure or create one for you and collate the information that we need to create your sales invoices promptly and get them out to your clients.
Credit Control
Unfortunately, some clients take a little more managing than another’s when it comes to settling your invoices. We’ll make sure they are chased up professionally and sensitively to get cash into your bank account whilst maintaining excellent relationships.
Why is Bookkeeping so important?
Bookkeeping is the foundation that your company accounts are built on.
To be honest, I could just leave it there... A builder will tell you that a dodgy foundation can't be built on and needs to be fixed. This starts with decent groundwork and the quality needs to be certain at each point.
Single entry bookkeeping services are not something you pay for. If you consider bookkeeping to be the tracking of your income and expenses and therefore receiving a profit and loss at the end of the year, you're talking about single entry bookkeeping. And any idiot can do it!
Bookkeepers however, are trained in a method called Double-Entry Bookkeeping. This basically states that every transaction, from sales to purchases, the owner putting money in to taking out a loan out and everything in between, has 2 financial effects. 1 of the effects will generally affect your profit and loss and the other will generally affect your balance sheet, but not always.
So what's the point in over complicating it? Well, when you use double entry bookkeeping principles you fundamentally create 2 entries for each transactions (sometimes more) in order to ensure that you have an accurate statement of your businesses financial position. You are thereby able to know how much money the owner can take out of the business if they were to liquidate (sell their assets and pay off their liabilities). You also have a profit and loss that is accurate. What's more if you're a limited company you have to at least be able to generate a balance sheet.
Now all accounting softwares like Quickbooks, Xero, Sage, Free Agent etc. are built on this double entry system. But these companies are leading you astray.
See, they use phrases like 'helps you take control of your business', 'run your business without the drama' & my personal favourite; 'All in one, Tax & Software Solution'. Realistically though they're all tools for you to use to do your own accounting and bookkeeping. They still rely on you understanding how they work, categorising expenses, income, assets & liabilities correctly. They still rely on some basic understanding of business or accounting.
Just like:
I can go to screw fix and purchase an amazing plumbing tool, that is the all encompassing, only tool you'll ever need to carry out a plumbing task, or series of tasks. The point is, if you don't know how to use it, what the problem is with it or where to start, that tool is useless.
When we take control of your bookkeeping in Surrey and Farnham, we don't just do your bookkeeping. we provide you a full finance function, and to do that we use the software that you have on offer, quickbooks, xero, sage, free agent etc. BUT we only use this for a part of what we do. Entering your income and expenses is where we start (whilst simultaneously updating your financial position). Once this is done though we can then use our expertise to do much much more and positively impact your business.
Whether this is about making changes to your credit terms with suppliers, improving payment speed from your customers, implementing management accounts to keep you on top of what's going on or simply ensuring you have all of the correct receipts for your VAT and Income tax returns. We offer solutions and a roadmap of how to build and grow your business effectively and sustainably.
It's estimated that businesses who invest in a finance function will generally invest somewhere in the region of 3% of their annual turnover. This means that if you're a £300,000 turnover business, the investment required to ensure that you're not only compliant but financially aware enough to grow would be around £9,000 per year. At the moment your software package costs you around £250 per year, maybe, so you're saving money right? However the long and the short of it is, if you invest £250 and a whole load of your time in the finance function, you are only going to see a small percentage of that £250 in return. If you invest £9,000 however, this can not only be recouped by becoming more profitable (by more than £9,000) you will unlock the ability to sustainably grow your small business, and the best part?
When clients work with us, within the first year, they're working less in their business, more on their business, they have more free time to do the things they love and they're making more money.
So if you want to become more profitable, less busy, in charge of your business, with more free time to do the things you actually love to do...
Book a discovery call to get started!