Being well organized can save you a lot of time, but more importantly money. With that being said, we understand it’s quite a tall task to maintain. That’s why we’ve come up with several tips to ease the burden. With these tips you’ll spend less time trying to find that one receipt to give your accountant and more time relaxing with loved ones. We’ll start off with personal then move on to business.
Personal
- Move to the Cloud
It’s so much easier and cheaper to have your files in the cloud. Some really good products we use are Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive
- Use apps to do the work
There are a ton of apps out there that just make life easier. If you’re having trouble figuring out where your money is going use Mint or Spend Smarter. You can link your financial accounts (bank, investments, loans, etc.) and categorize what you spend. You can even set reminders of when bills are due.
- Â Talk with a friend or adviser
We all have that one friend that just seems to know the right thing to do with their money. Ask your friend if they can share some tips that will make things easier for you. If it’s worthwhile you should pay them for helping you out. If you don’t know anyone, we advise speaking with a financial advisor.
Read a book
We understand talking to someone about your finances may be a bit…personal and books are a great alternative. There are a ton of books out there. Here are some of our favorites: The Richest Man in Babylon, Total Money makeover, The Millionaire Mind, the Millionaire Next Door. As much as we encourage reading, the best action is applying the topics.
Business
- Open a Business Bank Account
We know this might be a topic that can go without saying, but we’re saying it. Mingling personal and business in the same bank account will cause you a ton of work come tax season and you may miss out on deductions which would save you money. Separating personal from business is a foundational step towards being organized.
- Get Accounting Software
Whether you prefer desktop or cloud based software, you have quite a few options to choose from. Operating a business is quite the task and buying accounting software makes organizing your financials much easier. As you continue to grow your business eventually you’ll want to gain funding and having your financials in order is fundamental in the funding process.
Hire an Accountant
As well all know, you can’t go as far being a jack of all trades. As an entrepreneur we wear many hats and as our business grows our goal is to delegate tasks to focus on what we love most. Think about hiring an accountant to take care of the financial piece of the business.
- Use Apps
There are tons of apps out there to help you with, for example, tracking mileage (Mileage IQ), time (Tsheets), expenses (Concur, Expensify), document storage (OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive), etc. We could go further but our point is apps can be used as tools to make life easier. Of course there’s a cost with that however, you can’t beat the price of how much time it will save you.
- Move Paper Documents to the Cloud
Take that file cabinet and throw it away! We’re just messing around, but seriously, your file cabinet should be in the cloud. Society is vastly moving to digital and storing files in the cloud is pretty affordable. For less than $10 a month ($99 per year) you can store up to 1 TB of data using OneDrive. That’s thousands of documents! On top of that cloud storage makes it easier to share files with anyone. They even fit in your pocket (your phone to be exact). Instead of thumbing your fingers through file tabs to find that one dental bill you swore you put in the cabinet you can be typing in the search box Dropbox to pull up the file in seconds. That’s why we’re big advocates of cloud storage. The flexibility cloud storage gives you will make your life a whole lot easier!
There you have it. We don’t claim to be all knowing, but at BFS we know a thing or two on organizing and want to share our insights. Feel free to subscribe to our newsletter and/or contact to learn more about our services!
