5 Ways Your Accounting Software Can Help You Run Your Business

Business owners know their accounting software provides historic numbers on reports called balance sheets, and profit and loss or income statements. These reports are used to:

• Prepare tax returns
• Satisfy requests from bankers
• File sales tax returns
• File 1099 information returns
• Balance your check book
• Identify accounts receivable

Did you know that your financial accounting software can also help you make informed business decisions? Here are five ways your accounting software can help you run your business.

1. Memorized Reports:

Memorizing a report allows you to save it with its current customization settings. Because the report is memorized, you can quickly adjust the date and send the report to users without taking the time to format.

Benefits of Memorized Reports:

• Save time
• Create consistent information
• Spot trends, earlier
• Communicate information to team members
• Export to other accounting software applications (such as Excel)

2. Dashboards:

Dashboards combine multiple pieces of information from various individual financial reports, along with other key data, and place it in one location.

Benefits of Dashboards:

• Pull key information from multiple software applications into one place
• Easily access key information
• Share information with team members
• Provide aggregate data
• Save time manually chasing data and running separate reports
• Provide visibility to multiple users at multiple levels in an organization; add accountability
• Identify problem areas and potential risks to the owners faster than month-end financials

3. Class Accounting by Business Segment:

Class accounting allows you to report on distinct economic activities, locations or departments. Class tracking lets you track general ledger account balances by department, business office or location. This also lets you separate properties or create any other meaningful breakdown of your business.

Benefits of Class Accounting by Business Segments:

• Gain an understanding of how each of the separate classes or areas of your business are performing
• Identify areas in your business that are profitable
• Compare business segments over periods of time, and to other business segments
• Use as an accountability measurement tool for the management team
• Identify areas of increased expense, potentially allowing you to accurately charge your clients or customers

4. Job Costing:

Job costing allows you to determine the overall price and profitability of a particular job. Job costing uses detailed revenue and expense information relating to a specific job to assess the profitability of that job.

Benefits of Job Costing:

• Help your company evaluate jobs
• Improve the process of estimating and bidding on future jobs
• Accurately price your jobs
• Avoid future mistakes
• Provide comparable job information
• Provide an accountability measurement tool for the management team
• Identify areas of increased expense, potentially allowing you to accurately charge your clients or customers

Note that job costing can be very time consuming and can require complex calculations. Discuss the implementation of this tool with your CPA or tax consultant.

5. Track Sales by Leads or Sales Rep:

Access the feature in your accounting software that tracks sales leads. This will allow you to identify where your sales are coming from. In QuickBooks Online, the tag function will allow you to obtain information about where your sales originated.

Benefits of Tracking Sales by Leads:

• Facilitate growth
• Identify strong and weak sales representatives
• Identify future sales opportunities
• Share information with team members
• Provide comparable sales volume data
• Provide accountability measurement tool for management and sales rep
• Save time by eliminating manual calculations
• Become more efficient in creating sales and marketing plans, or even sales routes

Save time and valuable effort by using your accounting software to its maximum potential.

Let us know if you have any questions about your accounting software, and its current capabilities. Associate director Peggy Prall is here to help.

Looking for more specific QuickBooks information? Here is a blog on how to use QuickBooks Online for bank reconciliations.