Finance Freebie Friday

Welcome to Finance Freebie Fridays where I provide a virtual open office hours for business CFO questions.

I try to suggest a weekly topic to get the ball rolling but ask anything.

This week I'd like to chat about when to actually start having your accounting done with your business.

The short and correct answer is: immediately upon forming and opening the business bank account(s).

But we all know the best-laid plans... so here's some advice for when that slips through the cracks:

• If you start your bookkeeping later, make sure to import all activity from when you started the bank account(s). (You see why it's better to just do it from the beginning...)

• If you can't afford a professional bookkeeper/CFO - ask for project-based help. Ask to see if they can teach you a few things to do on your own so that you can do your best. While you wait to have a professional go over everything, close does count in horseshoes, hand grenades, and this

• Worst case, get caught up and fix on a quarterly basis. I've observed if you wait longer than this a) you won't remember the vague or odd items and b) too much time passes to dispute actual errors

• While doing things quarterly doesn't help you run your business that well with financial insights, it does accomplish the other important purposes of catching expensive errors and making sure things are up to date for annual taxes

• Having subcontracted for CPA firms when I was early in my career, I do not recommend their bookkeeping as it's usually generic and inaccurate, they seemed to focus only on information for annual taxes - not weekly business insights (if you go this route, do all the due diligence)

I could go on - but that's a start! What questions do you have? Curious what software I recommend?

Message me & let me know! - Kirsten