The cloud accounting imperative for small businesses

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With 2.3m Quickbooks users in the US and more than 1m Xero subscribers in the UK, cloud accounting is now firmly in the mainstream. Gone are the days of having a dedicated computer in the corner of the accounts office so that businesses could manage their books. Or of completing a spreadsheet and spending a whole day putting your receipts in date order before you delivered them to your accountant. Now, even small businesses can access the kind of accounting intelligence which used to need a whole department to create it.

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Not all cloud accountancy packages were created equal

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The internet has enabled the creation of a different world of IT systems. Outside the US, Xero is the market-leading online accounting package. In the US it’s Intuit’s Quickbooks, and there are many others, such as FreeAgent, Kashflow and Zoho, with Sage finally getting its act together and releasing Sage One. Each of the platforms is different, although all offer the same core services. The golden rule is that using any cloud-based accounting package will be better than sticking with paper and a spreadsheet.

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The value of knowing the financial inputs and outputs of your business

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When small business owners think about accounts, many are thinking about an end result, a product of all their efforts over a year. But accounting is so much more than the output. Done right, and with the support of some of the brilliant software available, it can turn real-time information into intelligence on which to base business decisions.

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What you need to know about cloud accounting for small businesses

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With 2.3m Quickbooks users in the US and more than 1m Xero subscribers in the UK, cloud accounting is now firmly in the mainstream. Gone are the days of having a dedicated computer in the corner of the accounts office so that businesses could manage their books. Or of completing a spreadsheet and spending a whole day putting your receipts in date order before you delivered them to your accountant. Now, even small businesses can access the kind of accounting intelligence which used to need a whole department to create it.

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Essential finance foundations – principles and jargon

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One of our jobs as financial directors is to train business owners and managers on the fundamental foundations of finance. By understanding the 3 different core statements/reports that make up a set of accounts – and the jargon that goes with them – you’ll become much more confident in your ability to translate the figures, and realise that accounts aren’t really quite as complex as they can first appear.

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The balance sheet – a snapshot of your business finances

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The balance sheet is one of the 3 different statements/reports that make up your set of accounts; it’s called a balance sheet because it will always balance

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The profit and loss account – a video of your business efficiency

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We say this is the ‘video’ of your business, as it tells the story of how operationally efficient your business was in the 12 month accounting period, by showing all the invoices in and out, to show revenue raised and costs incurred.

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The cash flow statement

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Your cash flow statement is like your business’s CCTV camera, as it shows you physically what cash has come in and what cash has gone out in that accounting period.

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The A-Z of goal setting

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Setting a goal gives us a target to aim for; it gives us something to focus on and helps to keep us motivated; a natural by-product is enhanced performance. And the benefits don’t just appear when you meet the goal. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that just by setting one in the first place you have a higher chance of being successful, whether you meet the challenge you set yourself or not – and in my view, that’s because in thinking about what’s required for a target, you’re already putting yourself ahead of people who don’t.

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The benefits of setting goals

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Setting a goal gives us a target to aim for; it gives us something to focus on and helps to keep us motivated; a natural by-product is enhanced performance.

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