Bookkeeping – Definition, Importance, Types & Methods

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What is bookkeeping and why is it important?

Bookkeeping is the process of recording your company’s financial transactions into organized accounts on a daily basis. It can also refer to the different recording techniques businesses can use. Bookkeeping is an essential part of your accounting process for a few reasons. When you keep transaction records updated, you can generate accurate financial reports that help measure business performance. Detailed records will also be handy in the event of a tax audit.

This guide will walk you through the different methods of bookkeeping, how entries are recorded, and the major financial statements involved.

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Methods of bookkeeping

Before you begin bookkeeping, your business must decide what method you are going to follow. When choosing, consider the volume of daily transactions your business has and the amount of revenue you earn. If you are a small business, a complex bookkeeping method designed for enterprises may cause unnecessary complications. Conversely, less robust methods of bookkeeping will not suffice for large corporations.

With this in mind, let’s break these methods down so you can find the right one for your business.

Single-entry bookkeeping

Single-entry bookkeeping is a straightforward method where one entry is made for each transaction in your books. These transactions are usually maintained in a cash book to track incoming revenue and outgoing expenses. You do not need formal accounting training for the single-entry system. The single-entry method will suit small private companies and sole proprietorships that do not buy or sell on credit, own little to no physical assets, and hold small amounts of inventory.

Double-entry bookkeeping

Double-entry bookkeeping is more robust. It follows the principle that every transaction affects at least two accounts, and they are recorded as debits and credits. For example, if you make a sale for $10, your cash account will be debited for $10 and your sales account will be credited by the same amount. In the double-entry system, the total credits must always equal the total debits. When this happens, your books are “balanced.”

Using the double-entry method for bookkeeping makes more sense if your business is large, public, or buys and sells on credit. Enterprises often choose the double-entry system because it leaves less room for error. In a way, it ‘double-checks’ your books because each transaction is recorded as two matching but offsetting accounts.

Cash-based or accrual-based

The next step is choosing between cash or accrual basis for your bookkeeping. This decision will depend on when your business recognizes its revenue and expenses.

In cash-based, you recognize revenue when you receive cash into your business. Expenses are recognized when they are paid for. In other words, any time cash enters or exits your accounts, they are recognized in the books. This means that purchases or sales made on credit will not go into your books until the cash exchanges.

In the accrual method, revenue is recognized when it is earned. Similarly, expenses are recorded when they are incurred, usually along with corresponding revenues. The actual cash does not have to enter or exit for the transaction to be recorded. You can mark your sales and purchases made on credit right away.

Both a cash and accrual basis can work with single- or double-entry bookkeeping. In general however, the single-entry method is the foundation for cash-based bookkeeping. Transactions are recorded as single entries which are either cash coming in or going out. The accrual basis works better with the double-entry system.

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How to record entries in bookkeeping

Generating financial statements like balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements helps you understand where your business stands and gauge its performance. For these reports to portray your business accurately, you must have properly documented records of your transactions. Keeping these records as current as possible is also helpful when reconciling your accounts.

Recording transactions begins with source documents like purchase and sales orders, bills, invoices, and cash register tapes. Once you gather these documents, you can record the transactions using journals, ledgers, and the trial balance. If you are a very small company, you may only need a cash register. The information can then be consolidated and turned into financial statements.

Cash registers

A cash register is an electronic machine that is used to calculate and register transactions. Usually, cash registers are used to record cash flow in stores. The cashier collects the cash for a sale and returns a balance amount to the customer. Both the collected cash and balance returned are recorded in the register as single-entry cash accounts. Cash registers also store transaction receipts, so you can easily record them in your sales journal.

Cash registers are commonly found in businesses of all sizes. However, they aren’t usually the primary method of recording transactions because they use the single-entry, cash-based system of bookkeeping. This makes them convenient for very small businesses but too simplistic for enterprises.

The journal

The journal is called the book of original entry. It is the place where a business chronologically records its transactions for the first time. A journal can be either physical (in the form of a book or diary), or digital (stored as spreadsheets, or data in accounting software). It specifies the date of each transaction, the accounts credited or debited, and the amount involved. While the journal is not usually checked for balance at the end of the fiscal year, each journal entry affects the ledger. As we’ll learn, it is imperative that the ledger is balanced, so keeping an accurate journal is a good habit to keep. This form is useful for double-entry bookkeeping.

The ledger

A ledger is a book or a compilation of accounts. It is also called the book of second entry. After you enter transactions in a journal, they are classified into separate accounts and then transferred into the ledger. These records are transcribed by accounts in the order: assets, liabilities, equity, income, and expenses. Like the journal, the ledger can also be physical or electronic spreadsheets.

A ledger contains a chart of accounts, which is a list of all the names and number of accounts in the ledger. The chart usually occurs in the same order of accounts as the transcribed records.

Unlike the journal, ledgers are investigated by auditors, so they must always be balanced at the end of the fiscal year. If the total debits are more than the total credits, it’s called a debit balance. If the total credits outweigh the total debits, there is a credit balance. The ledger is important in double-entry bookkeeping where each transaction changes at least two sub-ledger accounts.

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Trial balance

The trial balance is produced from the compiled and summarized ledger entries. The trial balance is like a test to see if your books are balanced. It lists the accounts exactly in the following order: assets, liabilities, equity, income, and expenses with the ending account balance.

An accountant usually generates the trial balance to see where your business stands and how well your books are balanced. This can then be cross-checked against ledgers and journals. Imbalances between debits and credits are easy to spot on the trial balance. It is not always error-free, though. Any miscalculated or wrongly-transcribed journal entry in the ledger can cause an incorrect trial balance. It is best to look out for errors early, and correct them on the ledger instead of waiting for the trial balance at the end of the fiscal year.

Financial statements

The next, and probably the most important, step in bookkeeping is to generate financial statements. These statements are prepared by consolidating information from the entries you have recorded on a day-to-day basis. They provide insight into your company’s performance over time, revealing the areas you need to improve on. The three major financial reports that every business must know and understand are the cash flow statement, balance sheet, and income statement.

The cash flow statement

The cash flow statement is exactly what its name suggests. It is a financial report that tracks incoming and outgoing cash in your business. It allows you (and investors) to understand how well your company handles debt and expenses. By summarizing this data, you can see if you are making enough cash to run a sustainable, profitable business.

The balance sheet

The balance sheet reports a business’ assets, liabilities, and shareholder’s equity at a given point in time. In simple words, it tells you what your business owns, owes, and the amount invested by shareholders. However, the balance sheet is only a snapshot of a business’ financial position for a particular date. It must be compared with balance sheets of other periods as well. The balance sheet allows you to understand the liquidity and financial structure of your business through analytics like current ratio, asset turnover ratio, inventory turnover ratio, and debt-to-equity ratio.

The income statement

The income statement, also called the profit and loss statement, focuses on the revenue gained and expenses incurred by a business over time. There are two parts in a typical income statement. The upper half lists operating income while the lower half lists expenditures. The statement tracks these over a period, such as the last quarter of the fiscal year. It shows how the net revenue of your business is converted into net earnings which result in either profit or loss. The income statement does not focus on receipts or cash details.

Bank reconciliation

Bank reconciliation is the process of finding congruence between the transactions in your bank account and the transactions in your bookkeeping records. Reconciling your bank accounts is an imperative step in bookkeeping because, after everything else is logged, it is the last step to finding discrepancies in your books. Bank reconciliation helps you ensure that there is nothing amiss when it comes to your money.

Why is it mandatory?

Bank reconciliation is a must because it:

  • Provides the exact financial situation of your company
  • Tracks cash flow accurately
  • Helps detect fraud or bank errors

Stay on top of your bookkeeping

Proper bookkeeping drives your company to success. It is a foundational accounting process, and developing strategies to improve core areas of your business would be nearly impossible without it. Yet as important as bookkeeping is, implementing the wrong system for your company can cause challenges. Some companies can still use manual methods with physical diaries and paper journals. However, as technology gets more and more advanced, even smaller companies could get benefits from going digital. This is where a cloud bookkeeping solution like Zoho Books comes in.

Zoho Books helps you keep accurate records of your business finances. It provides quicker and easier solutions for cash management, accounts payable/receivable, bank reconciliation, and generating financial statements. Further, its built-in automation takes care of mundane accounting tasks and helps you focus more on your business. Try our bookkeeping software for free and see how it can help your business maintain perfect bookkeeping records.

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Here’s How You Can Manage Cash Flow at Different Stages of Business Growth

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The life cycle of any business can be divided into four phases: launch, growth, maturity, and decline or renewal. Far too often, businesses fail to identify the actual stage their business is in, and miss opportunities for effective management. To take one common mistake as an example, a gradual increase in sales does not indicate your business is in a growth phase.

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Having a proper understanding of each phase of the business life cycle will help you prepare for the opportunities and challenges in each phase. The characteristics of each stage may vary based on business type, but if there’s one common feature that affects business at all stages, it’s the cash flow.

In this article, you will read about the effects of cash in different phases as your business moves through its growth curve.

The different phases of business

Phase 1: Launch

This stage is the beginning of the business life cycle. The goal of this phase is to establish your business concept to your audience in order to achieve a positive cash flow. If you look at the graph for this stage, the sales are usually low in the beginning and then there’s a gradual increase. Businesses often concentrate on marketing their ideas to a targeted audience in order to boost their revenue.

Phase 2: Growth

The slope for the growth phase is a little steeper than the previous phase. This phase of a business is defined by a rapid increase in sales leading to an increase in profits, as your business gets more popular amongst a wider customer base. In order to be competitive in this phase, you will need to focus on building and promoting your brand and invest in activities that increase your brand value.

Phase 3: Maturity

If your business has reached this stage, you have a devoted set of customers but the competition is still cutthroat. This is why the slope on the graph is a flat line that represents your steady turnover. Your sales revenue will be somewhat constant because you are selling roughly the same products, year after year, at the same cost. Businesses in this phase focus on maintaining ground with respect to the economy, competitors, and the changing requirements of the customers. Keeping an eye on the bigger picture will help you focus on improvement and productivity in order to compete with other businesses.

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Phase 4: Decline or renewal

In this phase, also called the post-maturity phase, businesses may find it difficult to cope with the new challenges posed by competitors. At this stage businesses can take several courses, depending on how their leadership responds. They may continue at a steady state, find a way to renew the business to fuel further growth, or eventually decline if there is no scope for sustained business and no successful attempt at renewal.

How to cope with the effects of cash flow in a business lifecycle

Launch phase

When your business is at this stage, your big needs are likely for money and time to establish your idea in the market. You may spend extra to establish your business and your sales might also be low, leading to a sluggish cash flow. The challenge is not to spend away the little cash that you have saved for your business.

To use your cash judiciously, invest in budgeting and forecasting in order to monitor your spending. Make sure to establish strict payment terms so that your receivables reach you on time. Using this discipline, you can build cash reserves that will keep your business on track during lean times.

An important parameter to understand for your business is the break-even point. This is defined as the point below which your business will need to source additional finances or liquidate some of its assets to meet your fixed costs.  Knowing about the break-even point may not change your cash flow, but it will help you estimate how much you can spend to reach your goals.

Financially, it might be tough to hire an accountant at this stage, but their advice could help you set realistic goals for the next phase of your business.

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Growth phase

The acquisition of new customers leads to consistency in revenue and increased profit. The extra inflow of cash that comes along with this phase is called positive cash flow, which must be used thoughtfully to move your business forward.

In this stage, suppliers will be reluctant to grant your business credit because you don’t yet have a long track record with their company. You will need to hire more people to work for your business, which means you need to spend more on wages. Most of your money will be spent on payments to suppliers and employees before it comes back into the cash cycle in the form of payments for the sales you’ve made to your customers.

You may experience a time lag in receiving those payments, though, as customers (especially retailers) will take full advantage of the credit terms that you offer.

Other factors like working capital, debt, and the cash cycle can also influence your cash flow at this stage. To keep your business healthy, your cash must be planned, monitored and measured, and put to judicious use. Forecast your business goals and plan the cash required to achieve your growth objectives.

If your payments still don’t turn up on time, your business should not come to a standstill. You can explore several financing options like revolving credit lines to keep your business operations going.

Maturity phase

At this stage, the cash flow does not change dramatically. Your mature business is likely to have stable sales due to market acceptance of your products. Operations will become profitable early in this stage, leading to net positive cash flow. This excess cash is usually used to pay off debts incurred during the launch and growth phases.

However, some businesses in this stage might see steady sales but thin profits. Using this limited cash flow, businesses need to find ways to power new ideas and make this stage sustainable.

Growing the value of the business is possible if you analyze your value chain and find places where you can cut costs. Doing this might help you reduce the cost of what you sell, eventually attracting new customers, which in turn increases the inflow of cash.

You can also check for new ways to provide additional benefits to retain your existing customers. You can even invest your working capital in distribution and promotion of your products in order to attract new customers or identify new markets to target for revenue generation.

One pitfall in this phase is that the market value of products tends to decrease with new competition in this space. Keep an eye on how these new competitors affect your customer base and consider investing resources in enhancing your existing products to stay competitive.

Decline or renewal phase

If a business is in decline, it will see a fall in market share, a drop in sales, and reduced profits leading to cash flow problems. This can prevent you from making payments on time, leading to increased debt.

You may be able to stabilize your business by further cost-cutting or catering to the needs of a niche audience. There are also ways that you can try to renew the declining business, such as acquiring a new business in the same market that has the scope to grow in the future. A successfully renewed business has the scope to help you jump back in the market competition.

However, if your business can’t be rescued, then an ethical closure is required. When you are legally closing your business, you will have to liquidate your assets into cash, which is used to pay back the secured loans from creditors. Following this, you must ensure that all your debts are paid, you have settled with all your stakeholders in a fair manner, and all employees have been paid properly.

Conclusion

Cash flow is the lifeline for your business. From launch to decline, cash flow is the one common factor in the financial health of your organization. To keep your business healthy, it is important to understand the effects of cash flow at each stage of the business life cycle and know how to respond. If you know when to spend, when to seek extra funding, when to cut costs, and when to cash out, you can keep working towards your business goals no matter where on the cash flow graph you are.

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Here are the top 7 cash flow mistakes that can cripple your small business

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All businesses run on cash. Managing money is an essential skill that all business owners should hone as the business progresses in its lifecycle.

Small business owners are often caught in a bundle of activities aimed towards business growth, with very little time or money to assign resources towards monitoring their cash flow. At this stage, there are many chances  to derail your business due to mismanagement of cash. According to a report from CBInsights, 29% of businesses fail because they run out of cash.

Some common mistakes that can lead to cash flow issues include forced growth, miscalculation of profits, insufficient planning for a lean period or crisis, problems collecting payments and more. The first thing that illustrates a problem with cash flow is a dip in sales and a stagnant inventory, both of which directly affect your revenue. Poor money management and forecasting can lead to multiple cash flow gaps in your business, ultimately preventing you from paying your bills on time.

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For your business to succeed, you must check for short term and long term solutions to avoid running into financial problems. Good cash flow management will ensure that you have enough cash to pay your employees on time, purchase inventory to fulfill your orders, have ample stashed in bank account as reserves, all while carving out an efficient way to collect payments before the due date. This will eventually prevent you from overspending and help you with your businesses’ growth plan.

 In this article, you will read about common cash flow problems businesses face and what you can do to save yours from a pool of debt.

Common cash flow mistakes to avoid

1. Not monitoring financial statements

Financial reporting is the method of monitoring financial statements at defined time intervals. A cash flow statement is a financial statement that gives you a detailed insight of your company’s expenses. Investors and other stakeholders rely on this document to judge the value of your business. When you do not monitor your financial statements regularly, you create chances for misinterpreting your businesses’ progress, which may lead to bad decisions.

To avoid roadblocks due to cash flow, you must prepare a cash flow budget to predict future earnings. Good predictions are only possible when you have clear financials that are reconciled frequently.

2.Confusing cash flow with profit

Business owners are always on the lookout for that one key metric to understand the financial health of their business. In such situations, cash flow and profit are often pitted against one another.

Cash flow is the net income of cash moving in to or out of a business at any given time. Profit is the money that remains when you subtract the operating expenses from revenue.

It is possible for your business to be profitable and still have negative cash flow keeping you from paying regular expenses and creating hurdles in your growth plans. Your business can also have a positive cash flow and yet find it hard to make a profit (usually the case in start-ups and scaling businesses).

Cash flow and profit are not the same, and it is important that you understand the difference between the two before you make any important business decisions.

For example, assume that you purchase wooden chairs for Rs 6000 at a 40% margin and sell it for Rs 10000. You can assume that you are making 40% on every sale, after considering minor expenses. However, at the end of a quarter as you prepare your balance sheet, you could be surprised at the losses your business made. In your calculations you did not consider a variety of costs like transaction fees, shipping costs, and costs of storing and returns (which might have been different for each sale).

You could have easily assumed that you are making a profit every transaction, but after including overhead costs you can see the business actually took a loss. When your business cannot keep up with the losses, it becomes difficult to fulfil the cash commitments, leading to a cash crunch.

Forecasting the consequences of such expenses is a necessary step and can be helpful in determining if there’s enough money in the bank account to meet all your expenses. For a healthy cash flow, you must first subtract your current expenses and future costs, like tax, from your revenue. Your business will only be profitable if there’s any money left after this.

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3.Unprepared for the lean period

Rainy days are inevitable in a business. You may not get payments on time, have insufficient cash to pay your dues, have to suddenly invest in repairing expensive equipment or lose customers during a crisis. Such excess expenses combined with insufficient financial reserves can drive your business bankrupt.

Planning the cash flow for your business is always worth the time. As a short-term plan, you can consider stashing away some money as a cash reserve. Financial experts suggest that you can ideally set aside three to six months of your company’s regular expenses as cash reserves. Of course, the best way is to find out your business needs and analyse your financial statements before fixing an amount.

You must also have a long-term cash flow outlook. This will help you forecast the cash required for business operations over a period of two to five years.  The best place to start would be to monitor your current income and expenses.

Here are a few things you can do to save up:

  • Set a monthly goal and set aside that amount every month.
  • Maintain a separate account to prevent from spending it elsewhere.
  • Always try and cut down on non-essential expenses.
  • If you receive a lump sum as profit or receivable, try to allocate a decent part of it to this account.

Your main goal should be to accumulate enough cash as a safety net to meet your needs during lean period, irrespective of how well your business is performing.

4. Not focusing on late payments

Late payments disrupt the flow of cash in a business. You will need to spend a lot of time and effort to chase down customers who owe you. There are chances that your business might run out of funds, making it tough for you to pay your own bills on time and putting your own business at risk.

As a temporary solution, you can opt for loans to pay your suppliers and employees on time. However, it is still difficult to perform core business activities efficiently with insufficient cash in hand.

You must understand that late payments cannot be avoided but can be managed with the right plan of action. Here are a few suggestions:

  • Clarify to your customers, in advance, about penalties you might charge in case of late payments.
  • Since smaller businesses usually do not charge penalties on late payments from customers, you can set up payment reminders for receiving timely payments.
  • If someone is unable to make payments for a prolonged period, try renegotiating the payment terms.
  • Consider rewarding customers who make early payments. You can offer a discount on open invoices or provide them a free service.

5.Trying to expand too quickly

When your business is flourishing, you are faced with increased demands for your products and services. When it happens quickly, you may find it difficult for your business to adhere to the business financial plan that you had devised for the year.

Investing in a bigger office space, hiring more staff, and rolling out new products are but a few scenarios indicating forced growth.  Although such initiatives may bring in more revenue from time to time, they can severely impact your daily operations if not planned correctly.

For example, let us assume that you are experimenting by investing in social media ads for your business. In the first month of investment, you receive a good return. So, you increase your ad spend three times expecting three times an increase in sales.

Even though you might generate more leads, what happens if your ad spend is not directly proportional to the sales? You might end up spending more than you earn, leading to inconsistencies in cash flow. You might need to take a short term loan to cover up your monthly expenses.

Forced growth can lead to problems like improper management of business, inability to manufacture inventory quickly enough to fulfil orders or difficulties in customer service.

Most business owners aim for sustained growth. Efficiently planning and estimating costs involved in expansion can help you manage your cash outflows better. However, you must also forecast and set aside money for paying your employees and suppliers on time and still have enough to pay for the office space while managing to convert the incoming cash into inventory orders. Your goal should be to fulfill all expenses that arise due to expansion in a single cash cycle.

6. Inconsistencies due to seasonal nature of business

Seasonal businesses are businesses that operate in one or two seasons in a year. Such businesses do not have a year-long operation.

For example, if you are selling winter wear, then the only time your sales might pick up is before and during the winter season. During the other seasons your sales may drop and there will be more outflow of cash.

As a business owner, you should find ways to make sufficient income to generate business during slow periods; this will help you maintain your cash flow. You can try partnering with businesses from other industries to create mutual benefits or to offer discount prices for your products. You can even implement creative solutions like hosting events to distribute your product samples, set up an online store or finding a niche market and create products for that audience.

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7. Inefficient management of tax

Paying tax is an obligation and needs to be settled whenever it is due, whether you are a monthly, quarterly or annual payer. Missing out on the due date and making mistakes while filing returns can attract interest and penalties, and may even have the Income Tax authorities visiting your premises demanding an audit. Not only is it expensive, but it takes up valuable time from your day-to -day business activities. Hence, it is important that you keep account of your taxes.

You can meet with a tax consultant every year to calculate the amount of tax that you will be required to pay at the end of a financial year. You should come up with a tax plan after taking into account the cash flow needs of future business operations. A good tax plan accounts for all tax consequences and calculates your income, based on which you can plan activities for long-term progress. It also helps save your business from uncertain tax rates that can affect cash outflows.

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Manage Accounts Receivable remotely using an online invoicing tool

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Remote work has been steadily on the rise over the past decade. Recent research by GetApp found that remote work nearly quadrupled over the past 10 years. With added impetus from the COVID-19 situation, remote work has become the new normal for many workers. This shift may be here to stay—a recent survey by Gartner found that 74% of CFOs intend to shift some employees to remote work permanently.

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As a business owner, your primary concern about remote work may be the productivity of your employees. The good news is that there’s a lot you can do to help them be productive. If you put the proper tools in place to allow them to carry out their usual tasks efficiently while working remotely, they’re more likely to show the kind of productivity you’re looking for.

This is especially true for Accounts Receivable, which is an area where many businesses end up using Excel for invoicing. A 2017 article by Small Business Trends revealed that a whopping 69 percent of small businesses trust spreadsheets to track their invoices and spending. The reasons are obvious—Excel is good with numbers. Calculations are easy, and it’s simple to manually correct small errors like an item value that’s entered wrongly.

But for an invoicing team to function remotely, it needs more than a tool that can calculate. Team members need to be able to send estimates and invoices, collect payments, share insights and information easily, and most of all, stay up to date. This is where spreadsheets tend to fail, and where online invoicing tools can help.

In this article, we’ll look at the different aspects of the invoicing process and how online invoicing tools offer an edge over Excel for remote work.

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1. Collaboration

In a traditional office setting, a lot of information gets exchanged during face-to-face interactions. Since this is out of the question with remote work, it’s important to ensure that your team members are still able to collaborate and keep the show running.

Shared notes:

If messages regarding financial transactions are exchanged via collaboration tools like a chat group or email thread, it means they are not linked with the corresponding transactions. As a result, your team members have to go back and forth between their messages and their invoicing tasks to get the right information.

Since online invoicing tools are designed for a multi-user environment, they allow your team members to communicate in a space that’s connected to the work they’re doing. Users can record important details regarding invoices or estimates as comments that can be viewed by other users in the organization.

Shared access:

With Excel, it’s challenging to provide your team members with access to the information they need, while maintaining the security of sensitive financial information. Online invoicing tools, on the other hand, allow you to give users specific role-based access—you can define what they can and cannot view or modify.

Shared reports:

Collaboration is not just about conversations—it’s also about making sure everyone is in the loop. Online invoicing tools allow you to schedule sales and other reports to be automatically emailed to your team members. This helps them stay up-to-date on the team’s activities, wherever they are.

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2. Organization

If your company does invoices in Excel, each invoice has to be created in a separate file for recordkeeping and sending to the customer. Organizing separate files for each invoice means a lot of nested folders, which makes it hard to find the individual files later. A better solution would be a central repository where all the invoices are stored, searchable, and available for your team members whenever they’re needed.

Online invoicing tools provide this setup by default—since they are cloud-based, all the transactions are saved on secure servers, and team members with permission to access them can find and view them instantaneously.

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3. Keeping track of invoice numbers

Accidentally duplicating invoice numbers can cause a huge and possibly expensive headache for your company. Besides making it difficult to match up incoming payments, it can also cause confusion during the end of the fiscal year and tax season.

Keeping track of invoice numbers becomes more challenging during remote work when employees are working less closely with each other. You can avoid duplication by assigning number batches to different staff, but that requires an extra layer of manual coordination, and it makes it more likely that you’ll have gaps in your invoice numbers (which in turn makes it harder to check for duplicates).

Online invoicing tools eliminate this problem by centralizing the invoice numbering system. Once you set up how you want the invoices to be numbered, the application ensures that all your invoice numbers are unique and continuous, even if multiple users are creating invoices concurrently. This eliminates gaps and duplicates, making it easy for you to find and match transactions.

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4. Errors in transactions

Excel, as good as it is for calculation, can’t keep track of your customers and items. When you create invoices in a spreadsheet, these details are mostly copied from other sources, like emails or previous transactions. It’s easy for errors to happen during this copy-paste process, especially if you have a high volume of invoices. If you find one mistake, you can advise your team members to be more careful. But if you see these errors happening often, maybe it’s time to question the tool!

Online invoicing tools give you the option to save your customer and item details separately from the individual invoice. This means that while creating invoices, you just need to pick the right customer and select the products from a list. This eliminates a lot of the errors that can happen when you type these details each time manually.

If there are certain fields that must be filled in on all your invoices, an online invoicing tool allows you to actually make them mandatory.

In short, you are setting rules to make sure everything goes right. This ensures that your invoices are error-free when they reach the customer, even without having a second staff member review them.

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5. Tracing errors

If you notice an error in one of your invoices that’s already been sent, it may have already caused a ripple effect and caused errors in other invoices too. When Excel is used for invoicing, it’s very difficult to figure out which invoices have been affected. If you can’t search your files for the specific issue involved in the error, tracking down the affected invoices is time-consuming at best, and at worst, may not even lead to finding them all.

Because online invoicing applications record a time-stamped history for each transaction you create and save everything in a centralized location, you have many more options when trying to track down an error. Once you notice an error in a transaction, you can cross-reference that with other transactions created around the same time, using the same new product, addressed to the same customer, created by a specific user, or anything else that may be involved in the error. Since online invoicing tools come with elastic search functionality, you have the power to narrow down your search based on any of these criteria.

Also, online invoicing applications offer something called an audit trail. It’s just a record of each version of the invoice so that you can compare two versions of the same invoice to see what has changed and when. As its name suggests, this can be very useful during audits, but it’s also helpful for tracking down errors.

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Right Time Tracking Tool Can Keep Your Business Ticking

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6. Approval process

Many businesses have a process for approving sales transactions before they’re finalized. For example, the person who creates an invoice might run it by their supervisor, then by the sales manager, and only then send it out to the customer.

In companies that use Excel for invoicing, these approvals usually happen over email, which can consume a lot of time even under normal conditions. In a remote work environment, where team members can’t follow up on these emails with face-to-face conversations, you can end up with delayed invoices and even delayed payments.

An online invoicing application lets you define your approval hierarchy and have all of your invoices automatically sent to the next approver. At each stage of the approval process, the submitter and approver are notified about the invoice’s status, eliminating the need for follow-up calls and emails.

Does Zoho Invoice support barcode scanning? If yes, how does it work?

7. Project invoicing

If you charge customers based on the time you spend on their projects, Excel invoicing becomes more challenging. Each employee involved in the project has to log their time, then send it over for the AR team to apply the correct hourly rate and generate an invoice. For consultants who generate their own invoices, this whole workflow falls on one person; in larger organizations, it may be spread out among so many staff members that it creates another communication hurdle. In both cases, the manual calculations offer another opportunity for error.

Most online invoicing solutions come with extensive time tracking capabilities. If you employ temporary workers or independent contractors, you can give them access just to log their time without viewing any information about the customer or project. For your on-staff employees in leadership positions, you can use role-based access to allow them to view and manage the time entries of other users involved in the project.

The time that’s logged within your invoicing system can then be converted to an invoice with a much simpler process and no manual calculations. In addition, any billable expenses incurred during the project can also be included in the invoice automatically.

Overall, your online invoicing tool can act as the central hub for project information and keep project invoicing functioning like clockwork.

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8. Invoicing on the go

How many times have you received calls from customers or colleagues with questions about invoices and payments when you are not at your desk? Keeping all your invoicing data in Excel requires you to have your laptop or PC access to even the simplest information. Since remote work increases the chance of anyone in your organization being away from their work computer, a mobile-friendly solution might come in handy.

Most online invoicing tools come with a mobile version. Though they might not have all the features of the desktop version, they enable your team members to perform a lot of basic operations on the go—whether it’s sharing a payment link, recording the payment for an invoice, or pulling up last month’s sales report.

Here’s your takeaway:

If you want your invoicing team to be productive while working remotely, one of the best things you can do is to have an online invoicing solution in place. This keeps all of your invoicing information in a single application, eliminating the need for hundreds of separate files. It also keeps everyone in the loop without distracting and back-and-forth email threads.

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How do I check if my client has viewed the invoice that I’ve sent him?

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If you’ve enabled the client portal for your business in Zoho Invoice and configured it for your customers, they can view their transactions with you by logging into the portal. This includes viewing and accepting/declining estimates as well as viewing invoices.

The client viewed estimates and invoices can be filtered for separate viewing,

  • Go to the estimate or invoice tab under Sales on the home page of Zoho Invoice.
  • Click on the drop down next to All estimates or All Invoices on the top left hand corner, and select Client-viewed.
  • You can now see only the estimates/invoices viewed by the client.

[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.3″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.9.3″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_image src=”https://blog.gotmenow.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Zoho-Invoice-a-one-stop-solution-to-all-your-invoicing-requirements.png” alt=”How can I convert an estimate into an invoice?” title_text=”Zoho Invoice – a one-stop solution to all your invoicing requirements” url=”https://go.zoho.com/KwD” url_new_window=”on” align=”center” _builder_version=”4.9.3″ _module_preset=”default”][/et_pb_image][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.3″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.9.3″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_image src=”https://blog.gotmenow.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/sort-client-viewed.png” alt=”invoice” title_text=”sort-client-viewed” _builder_version=”4.9.3″ _module_preset=”default”][/et_pb_image][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.9.3″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.3″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”-36px|auto||auto||”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.9.3″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.3″ _module_preset=”default”]

Alternatively, you can simply click on the particular estimate or invoice and check if it has been viewed by the client. A tiny eye icon on the right corner of the estimate/invoice page accompanying the words Viewed suggests that the client has viewed it.

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