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4 Accounting Techniques That Benefit Your Business Productivity

4 Accounting Techniques That Benefit Your Business Productivity

You’ll have a lot of things on your plate once you decide to start a business. For starters, you need to hire the right employees for the right positions to ensure that every facet of your business functions perfectly. However, if you want your business to be productive, it’s not enough that you only focus on your manpower. You should also implement the right accounting techniques.

Accounting is vital in every business because this allows you to maintain a systematic and accurate record of your financial transactions. Accounting will make it very easy for you to make data-driven decisions and assess whether your business is earning or losing money.

For your business to remain productive, make sure to implement the following accounting techniques:

4 Accounting Techniques That Benefit Your Business Productivity

business chart showing financial success at the stock market

1. Start By Learning The Basics

Accounting is generally a complex topic as you’ll be dealing with numbers and many other financial transactions. Keeping track of your business’s accounting can also mean complying with the necessary paperwork requirements and submitting them to several government agencies.

If you want your business to effectively implement several accounting techniques, it’s best if you start by learning the basics first. If you’re still a novice in accounting, spend some time to know how accounting works and the processes involved in accounting. You should also educate yourself about what 3-way matching is, how a ledger is used, and what you should prepare during the tax season. The more adept you are in the basics of accounting, the easier it’ll be for you to make the most out of different accounting techniques.

2. Separate Personal And Business Finances

As an entrepreneur, you should prioritize setting up different bank accounts for your personal and business finances. This is one of the simplest accounting techniques you should implement the moment your business starts operating.

Having separate personal and business finances will make it very easy for you to assess the progress of your business, without compromising your personal finances along the way. You won’t have any problems assessing if your business is earning or losing money if you have another bank account solely for this purpose. Moreover, having a separate bank account will also help you come up with better business decisions as you’ll know how much your business can afford to spend.

Regardless of how taxing it can be to comply with requirements to open another bank account for your business finances, you should still do it. You’ll be able to reap the rewards of your efforts once your business starts operating.

3.Keep Accurate Records

In order for your business to grow, it’s important to keep track of all business receipts and payments. Regardless of how small the amount is or how minor the transaction is, if it involves your business’s finances, you should keep records of it.

Keeping records will also help business owners like you to easily review your expenses. Doing this will enable you to identify areas that are costing your business too much money, and come up with solutions on how you can cut down expenses.

It’s also a good idea to create a ledger for you to easily keep track of all business income and expenses. The ledger can be used to provide a more in-depth overview of the expenses incurred, as well as the amount of revenue generated by your business during a certain period.

4.Use Accounting Software

As a business owner, you’ll have many things to juggle at the same time, too many that you won’t have the time and energy to handle all these things altogether. From developing new ideas, to executing them, to attending meetings, and to managing to keep track of all the activities in your company, there are too many things to consider. If you can’t do them all by yourself, then, it’s time to turn to accounting software to help you out.

With an accounting software at your disposal, you’ll be able to manage all of your accounts in one place. Moreover, an accounting software will also enable you to check on all of your books, find errors in any of your financial data, and make changes right away.

Since everything is automated, an accounting software will also provide data that you can easily print out, so you’re always aware of where your business stands financially. Furthermore, you can schedule time to sit down, analyze your finances, and decide on what changes you ought to make in your business.

Be Committed To Learn

There are many accounting techniques you can use for your business today. You just have to implement ones that suit the size and nature of your business, and spend time to master these techniques. Accounting can’t be learned overnight, so make sure that you’re willing to exert effort to learn these techniques and implement them consistently in your business.

 

Do you need help with your finance literacy?

uoamoneyquizCase Study: University of Auckland Finance Quiz

One of the more exciting projects we have had the pleasure of working on recently, was for the University of Auckland. The goal was to help educate first-year students and encourage them to seek out and engage in smarter finance decisions. Now, unless you are an aspiring investment banker, learning about finance is probably as appealing as putting your hand in a bee’s nest.

So how could we help the University put the fun back in Finance?

We decided the best way to achieve this would be in the form of a ‘finance quiz’. Unlike something one might find on a credit card application or a tax return, this quiz would be worded and styled in a way that resonated with the student population and would hopefully encourage them to find out more information in the areas they were weakest.

As is often the best way to communicate with students, humour and relatability were key requirements. Picturing what might appeal to the broader student population was a fun challenge, forcing me to think back a few years to my undergraduate studies (I don’t think my mental maturity has changed). Although I am surely a poor representation for the collective student population, I feel we were still able to convey situations that most students can relate to. In case I found myself on a ridiculous tangent, we also had representatives from the university and focus groups of students to guide the direction.

What did we do?

The quiz was composed of 10 questions and 5 ‘finance’ personality types, originally provided as a guide by our Accounting/Finance clients, Love to Grow. Each question was adapted to accurately relate to current student issues. The character types were developed to be funny, but identify potential shortfalls in each student’s knowledge, which would encourage them to seek out more information. Although the final text was ultimately unrecognisable compared to the original, our aim was that the message would remain useful as an indicator of each student’s financial situation.

Check out some examples below:

finance quiz question CAS

finance quiz question CAS

And the results…

finance quiz result CAS

“Boom! You’re a go-getting super badass, with the wind in your hair and explosions in your rear view mirror. Life is sweet right now, and you totally know it. But it’s worth thinking about a safety net – just in case your luck runs out on the next roll of the dice! Start playing the long game using our money tips.

finance quiz result CAS

“Okay, you’re not frivolously wasting your money away, but you’re not doing anything useful with it either. There’s no sense in making sacrifices if you’re not getting anything out of it. Gone are the days of stuffing money under your mattress for safe-keeping. You need to put it to work! Be smart with your money. Check out some financial pointers.

 

Due to the nature of the project, we had to strike a balance between what was cheeky and fun, and what might be perceived to cause offense. This resulted in a generalised and somewhat ambiguous character break down.

Thankfully, through some crafty wordsmithing, we were able to combine the light-hearted and cheeky self-assessment, in a way that would not upset any students and still provide a valuable resource for those who needed help.

It was a fantastic opportunity to work together with a team made up of such diverse skills. We hope that the students who take the quiz will find it valuable and fun to play!

Thanks University of Auckland for the opportunity and Antoris & Luc Design for your help on this project!

The finance quiz itself has been published publicly on the UoA student financial resources page. Try it for yourself and let us know what you think!