by Kelly Kirkrod | Feb 10, 2020 | Uncategorized
If you’re a small business, the beginning of the year is usually spent finalizing future projects and initiatives, completing budgets or even playing a bit of catchup from last year.
Even with good resolutions and intentions, sometimes throughout the year, new projects come up, plans change and while you try your best to stay organized, we could always use a little bit of help.
To help you out and make the most of your 2021, we’ve put together some top recommendations of digital tools to help you save time and stay organized in the year ahead. Let’s take a look!
If you’re looking for a tool to help you save time from photocopying or organizing paper documentation, check out Scanner Pro. Scanner Pro by Readdle allows users to digitize documents, receipts and more with their own camera. The app enables users to quickly scan a paper document and upload a digital copy to Google Drive, Dropbox, and other cloud services.
No matter the document type or size, Scanner Pro can help you capture and share contracts, articles, resumes, receipts and more.
Looking for a free app? Try their sister app, ScannerMini. This version offers similar functionality but is restricted to sharing documents only to iCloud.
Find yourself sending lengthy emails when providing feedback or explaining existing processes?
Snag It by Techsmith is a great tool to power your workflows and improve overall collaboration. With this software, you can easily capture screenshots, web pages, text or video, and share with others or use it to create new content. Key features like layout templates, screen capture and recording, annotations, and text extraction help organizations provide clear feedback, establish new processes, create training documentation and more.
Did you know that you can claim mileage as a business expense? If you’re already doing this, you may know it can be a tedious process. In 2020, ditch your mileage tracker forms and try MileIQ by Microsoft. This app automatically runs in the background, tracking your miles and creates weekly reports for your driving. Need to separate business and personal driving? No problem, this app allows users to easily edit and categorize their trips. Additional bonus – this app is included with Office 365 Business subscriptions and is available across all devices, including desktop.
If you find yourself struggling to stay on top of hundreds of emails and keeping them organized, then Slack could be the app for you! This instant messaging application allows users to create channels for specific conversations, projects or topics, make phone and video calls, upload, share and store a variety of file types without size restrictions and more. With integrations into over 2000 apps, Slack can work alongside the programs you use and love, keeping everything organized and preventing organizational silos.
For those looking to keep better track of their time spent on specific tasks, make sure to try RescueTime. This app works in the background on your computer, phone, or tablet, and monitors how you spend your time. Users can set time limits for specific tasks – ie. answering emails, scheduling social posts and more, to help them manage their time more efficiently.
If you’re looking to take control of your expenses in 2020, try Expensify. With multiple pricing tiers, this app can support smaller to medium-sized businesses, all the way up to enterprise organizations. This app helps users manage and track their expenses, with automatic sync between Expensify and their accounting software, automatic updates to existing expense reports, expense categorization, approval reminders and more.
If you’re looking to move to a cloud-storage provider in 2020 to help organize and share your digital files, Sync is a great solution. Unlike common cloud-providers such as Google Drive, or Dropbox, Sync offers Canadian data residency, geo-replication, and end-to-end encryption. This cloud provider makes it easy to store, share and access your files from anywhere, saving time and enabling your entire team.
Our last recommendation is a personal favorite, 17hats. This software is an all-in-one platform that helps businesses with booking coordination, lead management, financial reporting, online payments and more. With everything in one place, 17hats supports your entire workflow from initial lead generation to customer surveys, ensuring entrepreneurs always have insight into their business.
We hope these tools can help you with the year ahead! If you’re looking for other ways to stay organized and free up some time, start by looking at what a bookkeeper can do for you.
by Calvin | Jan 4, 2020 | Uncategorized
Many businesses rely on bookkeeping and accounting services to perform financial tracking and reporting on a monthly and annual basis. Not only does this help protect businesses from any audits that could take place at a future time, it also proves to be vital to the health of an overall business. While many CEOs and owners choose to hire a bookkeeper or team internally, others consider outsourcing bookkeeping to a company focused on managing the financial standing of a business.
Insourcing and outsourcing services of all types provides different workflows. While some businesses might prefer to have an employee sitting in an office to perform work as important as bookkeeping, there is a tremendous opportunity to experience the value of outsourcing this service to experts who are supported by a team of trained professionals in the space.
Here are a few considerations between insourcing versus outsourcing bookkeeping and how these services can help your business
1. Outsourcing can provide higher quality work
When looking for an internal employee or new hire to take on the work of a bookkeeper, you must go through a series of interviews and back-ground checks to ensure you have the right candidate for you; however, outsourcing bookkeeping can help alleviate the challenge of background due diligence as this is already done for you.
Partnering with Kirkrod Bookkeeping means working with a business who has deep experience, provides certified bookkeepers and is a member of the Institute Professional Bookkeepers of Canada.
Outsourcing your solution, and identifying a partner who can work alongside you, is a valuable solution.
2. The cost is often more competitive when outsourcing bookkeeping
Instead of investing in a full time employee, your business can benefit from a team of skilled bookkeepers through an outsourced solution,
Many bookkeeping services provide a team of highly skilled staff who approaches each partnership as a team. This removes any sort of risk for downtime and speed of response, as a team provides the support you need versus one single point of failure.
Providing a team can make the cost more affordable; instead of a full time employee, who you will need to provide vacation, benefits, training and more, your team of bookkeepers are ready to provide the service you need to protect your business.
3. Bookkeeping will always be the priority of an outsourced resource
With internal staff, other responsibilities can get in the way. Human resources support, data entry, and more can be pushed on the desk of a full time bookkeeper, whereas collections and financial reporting can be brushed aside.
With a team of outsourced resources working for your business, their core focus and KPIs are tied to the success of what they were ultimately hired to do – financial tracking and reporting to share in the health of your business. Outsourcing this resource can help provide you with expertise and efficiency for your company.
4. You can get experience and guidance you need
Consider this – some companies can offer decades of collective experience for less than the cost of a single hire.
Working with a team, you will gain access to a plethora of insight, straight from the source Your team of bookkeepers have been working within the industry for decades (especially when working with a company like Kirkrod).
You will have a team of bonafide professionals with small to medium business experience, who can focus on reporting and operational efficiency in catching potential errors that could impact your business down the road.
Mistakes made in accounting practice is no small expense. Remember – the longer that these mistakes are unnoticed, the more complicated they could be to fix.
Selecting the best solution for your business
The right solution for your business will not only support your team, they will help your business truly thrive. Before you begin a contract with an outsourced bookkeeping company, ensure you take time to research the best solution for you.
At Kirkrod Bookkeeping, we are focused on efficiency, security and process. Our team maximizes the value of integrated solutions to provide you with the support you need to protect and scale your business.
We will also help you work from anywhere
Kirkrod Bookkeeping utilizes the benefits and value of cloud-based bookkeeping. Having your data in the cloud eliminates any sort of location challenges, so you can work from your office or remotely. This will help your team find a more balanced approach to work-life balance.
If you are searching for a solution to outsourcing bookkeeping, click here to contact Kirkrod.
by raveon | Nov 20, 2019 | Uncategorized
You’ve finally taken that leap of faith – you’re starting your own business. You are the boss now, pursuing work you love with passion. There’s no denying, it’s a dream come true. You thrive on coming through with excellence for your clients because you love your work. That’s why your customers come to you for what they need – you go the extra mile for them.
But does going that extra mile leave you time at week’s end to balance your books? Fill out your tax remittances? Plan for your business’s future? Oh how you wish it did, but often it does not. With the dream comes the rude awakening: there’s a lot more to running your business than just, well, your business.
That’s when it’s time to turn to another professional, someone with the same passion for excellence that you have: it’s time to hire a bookkeeper. But why would I pay someone my hard-earned money to do something I could do myself? What does a bookkeeper have that I don’t?
Skill:
Let’s be frank. Some people are just better than other people at working with numbers, and many of those people have sought long and specialized training in that field. If meticulous ledger-keeping is not your strength, forcing yourself to do it is liable to cause you unneeded stress that could adversely affect the quality of your primary work.
Time:
By the time you’ve finished the work you’re hired to do, how much time do you have left to sit down and do your books? How many hours do you want to spend chasing down those overdue invoices? Even if you’re able to keep your own books, are you then missing out on soccer games, school plays, family gatherings, or quality time with friends? Is it worth missing these precious times when a hiring bookkeeper could free you to make memories and build relationships?
Knowledge:
A bookkeeper must stay abreast of the latest procedures for collecting GST, for workers’ compensation claims, pension forms and all those other time-consuming government documents. Your bookkeeper already knows how to administer payroll and invoicing in the way that serves your business best.
Experience:
An experienced bookkeeper works for many clients and has a history of dealing with whatever needs their client has. Faced with an uncertain or delicate situation? Chances are your bookkeeper has “been there, done that”, and will immediately know a way forward that will give you peace of mind.
Perspective:
Your business is the focus of your days and your view of the world, as it needs to be. A good bookkeeper, however, offers you a detached, impartial set of eyes through which to view your business’s needs and challenges. When work has your head spinning, your bookkeeper can be a steady voice in the whirlwind. They can remind you about the big picture and the long haul, and give you the right advice to weather the storm.
If you’re still not convinced, try this: close your eyes and imagine your typical week. Now imagine your typical week when a tax deadline looms. Or when that special customer is three weeks late paying an invoice again. Or when that client relationship you’ve been cultivating for months finally results in an offer of work – but your schedule is too jam-packed right now to take it on. Now imagine these scenarios again, but this time put a bookkeeper into the mix. Imagine emailing your monthly financial data to your bookkeeper and… going to a movie? Imagine invoices going out and being paid with actual predictability. Imagine that new, exciting contract nestling neatly into your schedule and making you look forward to challenging, rewarding work every single day.
That’s the real dream come true. Looks like it’s time for you to hire a bookkeeper.
