5 Reasons Why Bookeeping Is Easier Automated

Automated bookkeeping, which includes business tools like payroll software, and bookkeeping software, have revolutionized bookkeeping, which means more productive and successful small businesses. Below are the top 5 reasons why bookkeeping is easier, automated:

1. Enter it once, calculate it over and over: Without automated bookkeeping software, a dedicated bookkeeper was required for even small sized businesses to ensure that product mark ups, returns and allowances, and payroll were calculated correctly, and then each entry had to be entered by hand into the ledger books. With automated bookkeeping companies only have to enter data on their employees hourly rates, the cost of their inventory, and even their monthly recurring costs, once and are able to easily copy and re-use previous journal entries to record their costs, returns, and sales.

2. Pay your employees right the first time: Payroll software takes the guess work and risk of human error out of payroll accounting, which is an important part of any business, since an employee who is not paid correctly may leave, or if you fail to withhold and remit enough taxes to state, local and federal taxing authorities, your company may be assessed fines, penalties and interest.

3. Stay compliant: With increasing scrutiny and laws regarding payments to non-employees, and reporting requirements regarding Form 1099, automated bookkeeping means that every payment to a vendor is automatically tallied, and if you meet the threshold where government reporting is required, the software program will automatically generate the form. Some programs will even allow you to electronically file the information return through them. Using the non-employee reporting function that automated bookkeeping provides is an important part of protecting your business from being assessed fines, penalties, and interest for failing to be compliant with federal, state, and even local laws.

4. Analyze your business in real time: Instead of waiting for the end of the year appointment with your tax accountant to talk about how your business is doing, automated bookkeeping means that these sophisticated computer programs can quickly show you which accounts receivable are overdue, what inventory is selling well, and which are not selling at all, and if your company has multiple retail locations, what the different product successes and failures are at each location. While this type of analysis may have required several days worth of calculations in the past, automated bookkeeping means that it is easy to generate with a few buttons. For analyses that you rely upon, you can even set up your automated bookkeeping software to generate them every week or month, so that they are ready for you to review at your convenience.

5. Stay connected: Automated bookkeeping will allow you to connect your bank accounts, such as investment accounts, to your bookkeeping software. This means that at a glance you can easily monitor all of your company's finances, including investment growth, costs, revenues, and more, without having to devote significant time to logging in to multiple websites, or, worse, waiting for a monthly statement to arrive in the mail.

Overall, it can be said that there are many advantages of automated bookkeeping and that it can make small businesses more successful and efficient.