Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. Meaning at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Don’t worry though. I only recommend products that I believe will help you on your journey.
Check Out Related Episodes & Resources
- Please Stop Doing Money Dates
- Why You’re Not Budgeting Even When You Know You Should
- 4 Simple Things You HAVE To Know To Run Your Books Correctly
- Why You Need To STOP Saving For A Rainy Day
- FREE Cash Flow Calculator
Simplifying QuickBooks – What Do You Need To Know – Ep. 78
Do You Need Quickbooks For Your Business?
Inside this episode, we’re talking about Quickbooks and Accounting for entrepreneurs – best practices, benefits and what you need to know especially if you have some clean up to do
So let’s do this!
LISTEN OR SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE IN YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS
Resources:
Cashflow Unlocked: https://aimeecerka.com/workshop
Instagram: https://instagram.com/aimeecerka/
Work With Aimee: https://workwithaimee.com
Podcast Key Points
0:00 – Episode Overview
2:31 – Best Practices For Accounting
4:40 – How Often Do You Need To Look At Your Books
5:24 – Sponsorship – Cashflow Unlocked Workshop
6:50 – Benefits of QuickBooks
8:58 – Fixing Your QuickBooks
10:33 – Recap
Frustrated that you aren’t making the progress that you should within your finances? Create an unshakable money mindset with the Money Mindset Mastery Checklist
Do You Need QuickBooks for Your Business?
Do you need QuickBooks for your business? Inside this episode we’re talking about QuickBooks and accounting for entrepreneurs. What are the best practices and benefits and what you need to know especially if you think you might have some cleanup to do? So, let’s do this!
Welcome to the Your Money Your Life podcast. I’m your host Aimee Cerka. After over 10 years in the personal finance industry and multiple personal financial and medical crisis, I was fed up with the lies or two being shouted from the rooftops by the Guru’s and the media. So now I help you, the ambitious woman step into unstoppable finances.
When you step into unstoppable finances, you create financial abundance that aligns with your personal values and goals. Without working 80-hour posts work weeks, without pinching pennies, without worrying how you’ll handle the next curveball. life throws your way. And it’s simple to the point kind of way, being married, having four kids at home homeschooling being a CEO running the household, I’m kind of busy. And I know that you are too.
So here, we get straight to the point. If you’re ready to eliminate fear, stress, struggle, frustration and guilt from your finances and all the areas they affect. You’re in the right place. Welcome. I’m so glad you’re here.
Simplifying QuickBooks: Best Practices for Accounting
All right. Welcome back to the Your Money, Your Life podcast. I am excited to be talking about QuickBooks today. Simplifying QuickBooks what you need to know if you aren’t connected with me on Instagram, you probably know that April is financial literacy month, which is also why we ended up having some sort of workshop live every single year this year, it’s cashflow unlocked.
We’ll get to that in a minute, if you haven’t heard about it. But let’s talk best practices for accounting for small business owners. Because the time that this is going live, you’re either about a month pass your tax filing deadline, if you have the corporation with like an as a corporation or anything like we do, or traditional tax deadline is April 18. Actually, so you’ve got about a week left, if you’re watching this on the day that it drops, but I’m kind of gotta get on it. Let’s talk some best practices.
The Limitations of Using Spreadsheets
Okay. So, um, spreadsheet lovers out there can use a spreadsheet to effectively track and manage your business finances. Logistically, yes. Is it a best practice?
No, if you were to ever be audited, which we talk about inside the Academy. We have a whole unstoppable tax strategy module, which I’ve heard, already heard, like, this is a really great module. People love going through this because taxes is such a hot button, there’s a lot of fear built in around taxes, okay?
If you were to ever be audited, having a spreadsheet is not a really great tool. It’ll be negative and negatively impacted. And you can’t prove some of the things like you can with QuickBooks, which we’re going to get to in a minute or other software like it.
Okay, so a confession time here. I use and keep all of my books ready in QuickBooks. But I also keep my spreadsheet so I can see numbers the way I want to see them in a spreadsheet. So guilty there. But that is not the accounting practice software that I use that is for my personal usage. Okay. Hopefully that makes sense.
And then the next thing that we see, or I see coming up, is you’re doing great, you know, you’ve got QuickBooks set up here, like I’ve got the software, set it up, I imported the transactions, I’m set, right? No big deal.
Like I don’t have to do anything with it. We’ll just look at it one time a year to take care of the taxes stuff. And that doesn’t work. We can’t make decisions in your business based off we’re looking at your numbers one time a year.
And if you’re just importing transactions, you’re not actually using the software the way that it was designed input, you should be importing your transaction so we clarify that you should do that. But it’s just a step in the process. Not the only step.
Okay. So those are some best practices. You also should have some sort of routine system software you can do this yourself. You can have somebody on your team do this to review your stuff, ideally once a month, if not quarterly because otherwise we end up stuck in there like we wait until it’s tax season. It is so stressful, all the stuff you have to get done, you get it all figured out.
Finally, probably way too much caffeine, all the things binge eating, like from the stress level of trying to figure out your taxes, and you’re like, I’m gonna do it different this year. Lo Behold, next year turns around, you didn’t change anything, right? So what’s different?
And even trying to hit your income goal for over six months, and it’s just not happening at least consistently. Then you’re tired of being scared of the IRS and frustrated, overwhelmed come tax season, but want to finally hit those income goals. But without sacrificing your relationships and your family.
Even if your to do list is just overflowing as it is, this free workshop is just for you. Inside Cashflow Unlocked, I’ll give you five essential keys to increasing your cash flow, so that you can make more money, understand your numbers and gain financial control and confidence. Even if you don’t have time for one more thing.
This isn’t just one of those classes where you get part of the information and zero help. I’m calling in a workshop for a reason. Yes, we’ll go over those five essential keys. But then we’ll walk through the first steps you need to take to gather so you aren’t left in information overwhelm. To see all the details, simply visit https://aimeecerka.com/workshop or text workshop to 817-969-4653. And of course, if you miss that link, it’ll be hanging out in the show notes for you.
The Benefits of Using QuickBooks
Now, I do recommend QuickBooks and I love QuickBooks. And so, let’s go over some of the quick benefits for using QuickBooks as a small business. Okay, it’s a very robust software, you can do your invoicing within QuickBooks, I don’t know if you knew that or not.
So, if you are somebody who’s working privately one to one, you can do your invoicing through QuickBooks, you can do other invoicing as well. But I think that one probably works easiest. You can do payroll through QuickBooks. Also, a lot of people run payroll through QuickBooks, you can store your receipts digitally having that there.
So, if you were ever to be audited, you have that paperwork. And then you don’t have to keep you don’t legally have to keep the paper there as well. I know some of us like to keep meticulous records, and we still have the paper, but it’s not a requirement. If you’re not that personality that I have.
Okay, it does do the bank importing. That’s a big deal. Timesaver that it imports everything, you can also create rules, and help it to learn each of the different strategies so that you’re not doing the same thing over and over again, it learns for you the system gets better.
So, then it takes less of your time. You can also customize your chart of accounts so that those reports that you’ve heard of, you know, your balance sheet, your profit and loss. And you might have tried to look at those before. But if your QuickBooks isn’t set up, right, it probably doesn’t make sense.
So, you can customize your chart of accounts to make it look how you want it to look. So that numbers make sense for you. So, it’s actually usable.
In full transparency actually just finished going through a certification myself, because I’ve done my own books for forever. But you’ll learn it when you attend Cashflow Unlocked, I have a special offering that we’re gonna add in that will be like your unstoppable CFO type offerings so that I can help you with this.
It’ll be like a done for you done with you type thing. So, I even like learn more that I can do with my QuickBooks and I don’t need the spreadsheet as much as I used to because I was able to make my QuickBooks work for me, okay.
Then, if you’ve been using QuickBooks for a while and you haven’t done it, right, you probably have like hid it from your account and you don’t want them to see because it doesn’t make sense. Like your bank balance and your balance are like $40,000 apart and you don’t know what the heck happened. You’re looking for 140 $1,000 transactions, and that’s not how it works.
Fixing Your QuickBooks
Okay, that’s not how that happened. Okay? But you’re like, Is this even fixable? Do I need to just like throw it all away and start over again, which there can be again, inside the workshop we’re going to be talking about times that to do this and we’ll go a little bit deeper in this so there can be times that you should start over, but you absolutely can fix your QuickBooks.
There are certain limitations with the see if I can run with the abbreviation is think it’s the IRS and they can I can I don’t remember that abbreviation on top of my head. The different organizations that are like set the legal or represent the legal requirements on if you can fix your QuickBooks or not, okay? So those limitations are in place so that you are able to do what you’re supposed to do, you can clean it up, you can make it look better.
If it is overwhelming, there can be a lot going on there, start one month, one account at a time, don’t try and fix everything at once, break it down into small steps. If you don’t know what you need to fix, make sure that you’re registered for Cashflow Unlocked, because I have a special bonus for you that’s going to solve that problem.
And that’s what I’ve got for you today we’ve are talking about simplifying QuickBooks best practices, what we needed to know. So, the best practices were we when it comes to accounting, we can use a spreadsheet, but we have to have that accounting software in there.
And the reason are I use this with the benefits. But with the accounting software. The reason why it works is because QuickBooks tracks every little change that’s made. And you can see it’s like an activity log.
So, you can prove when changes were made and that like your books weren’t altered. With this spreadsheet, we don’t have that same level of security attached to it. And that’s part of why just a spreadsheet won’t really suffice if you were to ever be audited, okay.
When we talked about the benefits of QuickBooks what a robust software is, it is and it’ll scale with you. It is relatively inexpensive for everything that it’s done. They have raised prices a little bit every couple of years. I’ve been using them for a while, but I find that so worth the investment. Especially since like we can streamline and so much can be done through it.
Taking Control of Your Finances with Cashflow Unlocked
Okay, then we talked a little bit about how to fix your QuickBooks that you can actually fix it. There are certain limitations that you need to be aware of from the IRS and that other organization that is escaping me and then if it’s overwhelming, just break it down little bit by bit, but I’m going to have more resources for you. There we go inside Cashflow Unlocked, so if you have not registered for that absolutely free event and you are an entrepreneur that’s been trying to hit your income goal for at least six months. What are you waiting for? I can’t wait to see you there. That is what I have for now. We’ll see you next time!
Your Path to Unstoppable Finances
Thank you so much for listening to the Your Money Your Life podcast wondering what’s next. When you’re ready, there are different levels of support that you can use on the path to creating unstoppable finances and your unstoppable life. After all, your finances are unique and your support should be to. Ultimately, we’ll create a customized plan to ditch financial struggle for good that works for you. Your goals, your priorities, your life. Go to https://workwithaimee.com to get started with one of our most popular programs, or you can book a q&a call with me, and we’ll figure out what your next step should be.
If you love today’s episode, make sure to subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. That way you will receive new episodes right when they are released. Then leave a rating and review it helps amazing people just like you find the show faster.
