Ditch the Spreadsheet: Save Time with a Smarter Bookkeeping Tool
In bookkeeping, we want quick, we want easy, and we want efficient. We are going to be talking about those things that are taking up so much of your time and save you time with a smarter bookkeeping tool. I was just complaining to my husband that it took me 40 minutes to clean up our kitchen the other night. And this got me wondering, is this how you feel about bookkeeping? That it’s taking up always too much of your time?
Well, today I want to share about my favorite time saving tool. You guessed it QuickBooks. The features that it has for why I think it is still the best choice for bookkeeping and how it can help you with some of that heavy lifting and really save you time, which is so important. Listen, us female entrepreneurs, we are busy. And we don’t have time to be wasting time.
I want to help you. And if I’ve done my job right, I’m going to convince you to start using QuickBooks this year. So we’re going to talk about automations, shortcuts, and other underused features that can really make your bookkeeping faster and simpler because that’s what I’m all about.
Why does streamlining your bookkeeping even matter?
I was on a call with a potential new client today and she was having a hard time convincing her husband that QuickBooks is the answer instead of him going through his checkbook on his own, trying to tally everything and reconcile everything using an old school checkbook.
Yes, I want to tell you there is a better way. And you know, a lot of times it’s easy to forget that there’s a lot of human error. The computer does the math for you. And it’s so nice, especially if you’re one of those girls that’s like, hmm the math is scary and I’m not good at it. The software will really help you, which ultimately reduces errors.
That can help you because there are times where you accidentally maybe added a zero or you add a couple more digits to a number, and it’s just really easy to do and completely mess things up. Very innocently and on accident.
I do see a new level of confidence in business owners who use QuickBooks as well, because it feels a little bit more official.
Not that there isn’t a time and a place for a spreadsheet, because I do believe that if you’re just starting out, it’s really great way to show that you are taking yourself seriously in your business by using a bookkeeping software because you are having to be responsible for tracking the items either way.
Getting used to systems and how different systems work together, as well as getting used to setting up automations is a really valuable tool. You can do that very easily with something that you have to do, which is your bookkeeping.
One of the best parts about QuickBooks in my opinion, is the rules feature.
These are just simple automations that help you categorize things based on certain criteria. If you have categorized something similarly in the past, it will help predict that for you. If you have those recurring charges I talk a lot about, then you can automate that. It can automatically add those categories so that they’re consistent and they’re always going to the same place. This is easy to minimize because if you’re doing your bookkeeping monthly with my checklist, which is my recommendation, it’ll walk you through the things you need to do every month to keep your bookkeeping in really good shape.
If you are doing your bookkeeping every month, it’s actually easy to forget, where did I categorize that thing? Did I categorize it to office supplies and software or did I categorize it to dues and subscriptions? Being consistent is really important. That is one great perk of rules is that you have it consistently categorized to the same place.
Now, if you are using the rules feature already, just double-check occasionally that things are accurate. It’s not a hundred percent foolproof. But it really can save you so much time, especially if you’re behind. If you’re behind in your QuickBooks, make sure that you go set up those rules so that you can save the time of repeating the same thing over and over. If you’re not sure how to set up the rules in your QuickBooks that is one piece of many that we go over in my course Get Comfy with QuickBooks. Go check that out.
Another feature I love about QuickBooks is the bank feeds.
Quickbooks will automatically sync with your bank and it will automatically pull transactions into QuickBooks from your bank account. Again, this cuts down on that manual entry into a spreadsheet and the potential for adding an extra zero or a plus sign instead of a minus sign. So this really helps keep everything nice and clean and it makes it easier to reconcile.
I know that’s still a scary word to a lot of people, but it makes it easier to reconcile because it’s automatically pulling in all the transactions from your bank. This is the main way that it saves the manual entry, by linking into your software. And so it’s already there for you instead of having to go through your bank statement manually and add everything into your spreadsheet.
Another time-saving feature that sometimes people don’t know about is recurring transactions.
You set these recurring transactions up and then it will create invoices, bills, and journal entries for a designated number of times or forever. Let’s say that you invoice a client the same amount for three months for a one-on-one coaching program. You can turn that into a recurring transaction and QuickBooks will automatically create those invoices over those three months and automatically send the emails. So you only have to do at once and then it is set up to invoice for those three months.
One client I was working with before she knew about this feature was trying to keep track of invoices on a yellow, legal pad of paper. She would create the first one and then try to track on just a piece of paper when it was time to invoice the client again and on what date and what amount. So, instead of doing that, you can create these recurring transactions and basically set it and forget about it and have the invoices going for you so that you don’t have to remember.
The last feature that I want to talk about that saves you time is the QuickBooks mobile app
It can take pictures of your receipts, it can track your mileage, and you can look at reports on the go. All of these things save you time because you don’t have to remember to sit down and manually attach a receipt, for example, you can just snap a picture and it’s in your QuickBooks.
You don’t have to remember to log your mileage. You can just start and stop a trip and it automatically logs it for you. So that is another time saving tip for busy business owners who are on the move and could really benefit from tracking these types of things that feel hard to track, but can actually add up to save you a good chunk of money on your taxes.
We talked about rules, bank feeds, recurring transactions, and the mobile app. One of the most frequently asked questions that I get is, “Is QuickBooks right for me and my business and my particular situation or industry?”
If you have any questions about that, then book a call and let’s see! I’m a pretty open book and a straight shooter. I’ll tell you if you’re at the place where it’s time for it or not, and then I’ll help you get it set up and learn it so that you can have the most success with the tool.
The last thing I want is this thing that’s supposed to save you time to actually end up costing you a bunch of time and money by not using it and being frustrated by it.
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