How to Choose the Right Bookkeeping Software
No one likes bookkeeping. It is a tedious task that consumes resources and quickly becoming outdated. The bookkeeping software is a necessity today, the automation of accounting and bookkeeping can help drive key aspects of a company. The right bookkeeping software can help an organisation keep its accounting up to date and stay on top of their business with real time data.
While accounting software takes care of the basic needs for financial reports like profit and loss, balance sheet, trial balance and cash flow etc. Bookkeeping is the process by which an organisation keeps its record and reconciles data into these reports. Here’s a look at the key considerations for choosing the right bookkeeping software for your company:
1. Automation Workflows
The bookkeeping software is not meant for accountants, but companies. A design thinking approach for bookkeeping software works best for people with a non accounting background. The workflows are intuitive and help people automatically reconcile bank statements, automate bookkeeping and get all their reports inorder with minimal assistance.
The workflow of good bookkeeping software is fluid and doesn’t need any great expertise to operate. Any person should be able to set-up and use the bookkeeping software to operate things. The online support forums, chatbots, tutorials and videos could be used for mastering all nuances of bookkeeping.
2. AI Driven
Artificial intelligence is driving the key software functionality today in most areas. Bookkeeping and accounting are no different. Infact, one of the most crucial use cases for AI is the automatic categorisation of the accounting data. This can help organisations to automate most of their bookkeeping services.
This means that instead of the manual rules and configurations, AI software can be used for categorisation of accounting data. So, the transactions and data can be categorized in an automated way. For e.g. a vendor bill for an expense is automatically categorized in the expenses, with the taxes and refunds updated accordingly. A good bookkeeping software will automate and make use of advanced technology for organisations.
3. Easy Accessibility
The cloud based bookkeeping software allows easy accessibility to company’s data anytime from anywhere. So, when your accountant needs access to finalise accounts, or your employees need to submit bills, they can simply login to the system from anywhere.
The software can be setup and made accessible to the authorised employees, clients, vendors, and accountants etc. It helps create an interconnected system to produce a realtime picture of the business with latest accounting data. The bookkeeping software can be used to manage various locations and departments of a business too. It makes accounting convenient and reconciliation easy. At any given point of time, you readily have the information you need.
4. Import & Export Data
The upto date bookkeeping services ensure that all accounting data is available for the company. So, when you need monthly reports for your revenues, expenses, assets, liabilities, assets or equity etc. You get these reports with all data reconciled till the current date.
The bookkeeping software should also facilitate easy import and export of data for companies. These reports can be emailed automatically at the end of the accounting period or whenever needed for business management. Many bookkeeping softwares provide functionality to automatically link and reconcile banking data. This ensures that all your accounting is done in line with your banking transactions & available in your bookkeeping software.
5. Payroll & Tax Services
Businesses need to be on top of their compliance activities. Whether it is the set-up of employees payroll or processing salaries for them, a good bookkeeping software provides these options. With integration of the banking and payment gateways, the salaries, taxes for federal/states can be automated.
The bookkeeping software provides options for recording all payments to employees, tax authorities in an integrated manner. The taxes are also filed using third party integrations with the IRS.
A bookkeeping software with payroll and tax services is a great need for companies. It doesn’t need separate reconciliation or going back and forth with information of salaries, taxes etc. Everything is set-up and reconciled at one place without any external or manual efforts.
6. Sales & Revenue
A bookkeeping software that provides functionality for client invoicing and collection of payments can record revenues directly. The recurring invoices can be set-up for SaaS based businesses for clients with integrated payment options. Bookkeeping needs an automated way for SaaS companies to reconcile their revenue collections and payables with just in time records.
The automated reminders, reconciliation and tax services can help companies sell their products/services with ease. The invoicing can be set-up as per the applicable laws of the land and jurisdictions. It helps businesses manage things with consistency and simplifies tasks for the sales teams too.
7. Tax Collection & Compliances
A good bookkeeping software takes care of every compliance report, tax inputs, credits, reconciliations and filing taxes for a business. Simply put, it provides everything that is needed for accounting and bookkeeping compliance activities as per applicable regulations.
The tax collections for sales tax can be automated with invoicing and customer payments. The tax liabilities can be calculated and filed as per the due dates for companies. A good sales and tax management system is the backbone of a business. A bookkeeping software that keeps integrated taxes for clients, vendors and employees can handle all compliance reporting. It can be used for preparing and filing tax reports for employees as well as companies.
Overall, the bookkeeping software is a quintessential tool that helps a company run its operations and compliances better. It automates company transactions and prepares accurate data that can be used for multi-state and federal compliances. It allows CPAs and accountants to use data from the system as it is and reduce your dependency on them. A good bookkeeping software reduces the need for hiring accountants, saves time, resources and improves compliance reporting for your business. A good bookkeeping SaaS solution offers an integrated and end to end service for your business accounting.
Kreyon Systems has in-depth expertise in automation of bookkeeping services & accounting for companies using SaaS solutions. The solutions are geared for improved employee productivity, accounting reports accuracy, regulatory compliance and reliability. If you need any assistance or have queries for us, please get in touch.