Start the New Financial Year With Your Head in the Cloud

The new financial year is here. Accountants, bookkeepers and business owners are in the middle of finalising financial year documents for the taxman, creating PAYG statements and not only doing month end, but year-end.

It’s a traditionally busy time for the financial and accounting part of the world. I saw a status update on Facebook the other day which made me smile.

“Don’t see my husband for 30 days at this time of the year #marriedanaccountant “

I am going to make the assumption that perhaps her husband is still following the traditional method of desktop accounting because if he was using cloud-based accounting programs and practices, there would be less hard graft and more automation. Less of the long work days and more of the getting home to see his family.

The new financial year is a great time to regroup and look at where there are opportunities to improve in all areas of business. And it is the perfect time to make any significant changes to bookkeeping and payroll processes.

As a business owner or bookkeeper if you were thinking of the accounting side of the business across to the cloud, now is the perfect time to do it.

Here’s three reasons why:

1.      Mind space

At this time of year you are right in the middle of the end of year accounting, payroll and tax tasks. You can see what isn’t working and is. Strategise for change NOW while you are experiencing firsthand the problems of remote desktop accounting and introduce new ways of doing things while people are exasperated with the old way. You’ll get more internal uptake that way too. Look at programs such as Xero Online accounting software that offer features such as automated bank reconciliation and real time reporting – perfect for this time of year.

 

2.      On the Go

Many of our clients at Cornerstone are small to medium business of all shapes, sizes and services. But what they all have in common is the trend towards running ‘mobile businesses’. By that term, we don’t mean the dog washer who comes to your house or the mobile mechanic, we are talking about people doing business on the run. Gone are the days of having to wait until you get back to the office to action something. With cloud accounting and some fantastic user-friendly bookkeeping and payroll software such as Intuit QuickBooks, you can approve a leave request, update a project’s profit and loss statement or revise next week’s roster while you are on a building site, at a networking event or (if you live in Sydney!) stuck in traffic.

 

3.      Clean slate

The new financial year is the perfect time to start with a clean slate. We all try (!) to do this on a personal level on January 1 of every year, so why not do it from a business management and accounting perspective at the beginning of the financial year? There’s less back-tracking and adjusting. It’s a fresh new start.

So make the 2015-16 financial year your own. Make business practice resolutions to take the financial side of your business to the next level. Breathe new life into your accounting and payroll processes to save time and money.