Jacksonville CPA | Solid Accounting Systems
Hello everyone and welcome to today’s podcast. This is brandon and president of Mineva Inc, a Jacksonville based accounting firm that’s here to help you achieve your small business goals. If you have a Jacksonville CPA that you’re frustrated with, tired of the mundane, the reactive as opposed to the proactive. Give us a call. Today we’re going to talk about the importance of having solid accounting systems. Seeing a lot of entrepreneurs get into the trap of not having a solid accounting system. What does that mean? It means you have systems in place to track who owes you. If you have any kinds of receivable to attract who you owe due dates, accounts payable to have a system that captures taxes due if you owe state or local tax.
Need to have a system that efficiently captures labor hours and syncs and integrates with the payroll system. Also syncs and integrates with your accounting system. Your General Ledger. What does a general ledger. It’s basically a ledger that tracks all of the items, all the transactions in your business, income expense, payables, receivables, loans, assets, name, anything counting. So if you’re not getting this information from your Jacksonville CPA, give Mineva call, we’ll help you out. So solid accounting system, payroll taxes, do job in class tracking. So there’s a huge one that I see people don’t set up. They don’t. They don’t know how to set it up. I’m working in engagement right now, helping a client setup their job costing system. Okay? Because they need to know business not smart enough to realize that he needs to keep a track of his jobs and make sure they’re all profitable.
So clients say, well, you know, I just, I just keep track of it all in my head. It was horrible. I’ve never seen a successful business owner that keeps track of it all in their head. Horrible idea. I’ve seen some business owners that think they keep track of it in their head, but they don’t.
So. And let’s talk a little bit internal controls. Part of that accounting system is making sure no one is stealing from you. Huge, huge, huge problem in the small business world. People, most people that fall into this trap start out with good intentions. I say good intentions. They, uh, they don’t start out intending to steal, they get in a bind. I need some money. They’re not making enough. They’re overextending themselves. Their family have a family emergency so they just borrow a little bit. Okay. They tend to pay it back. Well, if they didn’t have money in the first place, there’s no way they’re going to pay it back, but they are not rational enough to realize this.
So you need to have proper, proper systems built into your accounting system to make sure people are not taking advantage of you. Okay. It’s a matter of fact. We just went through a situation where a client where he led to his secretary slash bookkeeper slash personal assistant slash thief go after about 15 years. This woman had been with him since she was 16 years old, actually. Probably it was 15 plus years because she was over 30 years old. So you need to have proper systems in place. This woman did the bank deposit, she did the sales tax. She controlled the cash. She wrote the checks, she signed the check, she paid the bills. There’s just way too much temptation for this one. So if you’re Jacksonville CPA is not helping with this, give them a call. We can help you with proper internal controls.
Okay? Keep that checkbook close to your heart that, that chuck, but close to your signature stamp, close to you under lock and key. Don’t let people get. I’ve seen, I had another client. Somebody got a hold of their signature stamp. Wrote a lot of checks. No, it’s just a bad situation to be in. So make sure you have a solid accounting system all the way around. If you’re Jacksonville CPA is not helping with this, then give them a naval call. So people ask, well, what should I use? Um, you know, just have a few transactions. Do I need to get some fancy accounting software? Most clients, most accountants would say, yeah, you need to get, you know, have some kind of computer system like a quickbooks. And I agree to a point, but if you only have a few transactions a month, just put that, put that stuff in a google spreadsheet, share it with your accountant at year end, download all your bank transactions, definitely make sure that you’re, you’re separating your business and your personal transactions.
But um, if you have more than let’s say 15, 20 transactions a month, definitely need to have some kind of software system in place. Quickbooks online, it’s my software of choice. Some people like zero x, e r o some people like quickbooks desktop. Quickbooks desktop is more robust. Um, has, it has just a little bit more power to it for certain things. But I would say the majority of people can get what they need done with quick books online. It’s cloud based. You can access it from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection in a ready device, a phone, a tablet, a laptop, quickbooks online, quickbooks desktop. The downside of that is it’s a local file. It’s hosted on your local computer, your local server for the accountant to get access to review, to prepare tax returns, sales tax returns. You’re going to have to go back and forth with a file transfer system or have the file hosted on a third party server, which is going to be minimum $60 a month. Okay. Quickbooks online essentials, 17 $50 a month. Quickbooks online plus I think there’s the name is going to be $30 a month. So you’re gonna be saving a lot of money by going into quickbooks online.
Okay. All cloud based accounting can see it. You can see it. Alright. Let’s talk about integrations. So apart major key player in any accounting system is the document trail, paper trail, the backup that you would have to produce an audit, invoices, bills, etc. Asset purchases notes, amortization schedules, promissory notes. So there Are many software pieces out there that integrate with quickbooks. Quickbooks online has options to, to store your paper documents within quickbooks can take pictures of it, scan the items and upload them. Receipt is a, is a good software component, hub doc, hub doc. All these software pieces, um, manage help manage that flow of paper. They integrate with quick books, bill.com, great accounts payable, accounts receivable solution. All this is paperless. You scan the source documents. A lot of these pieces you can set up to to not even have a paper document in the workflow at all. The vendor supplies a pdf copy, the software piece will retrieve the pdf copy stored in your system and create the transaction in your general ledger accounting system. So software integration is key. You should not be manually keying ours from a payroll system to your accounting system. You need to have the ledger, the general ledger and charter of accounts mapping setup to integrate these things. Time is money, so if you come to the neva instead of a jacksonville cpa going to save you hours and hours of work. So give us a call.