The way a business manages its finances will either contribute to the success or the failure of the business. A crucial aspect of business financial management is the tracking of business expenses. Tracking your business expenses will enable you to make beneficial business decisions and drive your business towards success. We have outlined our top tips to easily track your business expenses and highlighted the important reasons why tracking your business expenses is necessary. SureBooks offers professional accounting services that will accurately and expertly track your business expenses.
Tips to Track Your Business Expenses:
We have outlined the top tips on how to best track your business expenses.
1) Business Bank Account:
Many small businesses or freelance businesses use their personal bank accounts for their business finances. Your business finances can quickly become confusing when your business expenses are coming off your personal bank account. Separating your personal monthly expenses from your business expenses will be time-consuming and increase the risk of errors, which will begin impacting both your personal and business financial situations.
We highly recommended creating a separate business bank account. Not only does this make tracking your business expenses exceptionally easier, but it also makes handling all other business finance aspects effortless. Additionally, many banks offer bank account options specifically designed for business with associated rewards that your business can benefit from.
2) Spending Tracking Apps:
One way to track your business expenses quickly and effortlessly is to have a spending tracking app on your business phone. There is a wide variety of spending tracking apps that allow you to keep close tabs on your daily or monthly spending, check your bank balances, as well as create budgets. Apps such as Spending Tracker, PocketGuard, and Old Mutual’s 22Seven come highly recommended for tracking business expenses.
3) Business Credit Card:
Many businesses will use a credit card to either purchase supplies or enjoy the benefits of a higher daily spending limit. Using your personal credit card for your business is not only extremely risky for your personal credit score, but it also makes separating and tracking your business expenses difficult. A separate credit card for your business is one simple way to make tracking your business expenses effortless and accurate.
Having a separate credit card for your business is also beneficial for your business’s credit score. If you are planning on expanding your business and are needing a loan, you can use your good credit score from using your business credit card to receive financing with optimal terms. Depending on your selected bank, your business can also receive certain perks by using a credit card, such as discounts on travel or rewards.
4) Business Receipts:
Every business receipt needs to be kept, recorded, and checked to keep on top of business expenses. By choosing not to check your receipts, you are risking not picking up on unnecessary expenses or charging mistakes that can affect your monthly budget. This will then impact your business expense tracking and provide you with an inaccurate account of your current business finances.
We recommend investing in scanning software for your business receipts. Digitised scanning of your receipts will keep your receipts safe from becoming lost or damaged, stored without taking up physical space, and makes retrieving your receipts simple. With a few clicks, you can immediately review your monthly receipts to quickly track the expenses your business has incurred in the last day, month, or year.
5) Accounting Services:
Accounting services will professionally and expertly handle all your business expense tracking for your business. Accounting services will record your monthly expenses, categorise them correctly, and then review your monthly expenses. Any suspicious expenses or extreme expenses will be picked up and communicated to you. Accounting services will also ensure that you are sticking within your budget and make suggestions on how to best handle your expenses to ensure the success of your business.
Accounting services are an effortless way to track your expenses. Accounting services will also provide you with a sense of confidence in the state of your business finances as you will know that every expense is being tracked and recorded accurately. SureBooks offers professional accounting services that will benefit your business in various ways, with one of the benefits being business expense tracking.
SureBooks Accounting Services:
SureBooks is a small business accounting agency that offers payroll and accounting services. We understand that tracking your monthly expenses is not always the easiest with every other aspect you need to be in control of to keep your business operating successfully. We offer accounting services that will take away the pressure of tracking your business expenses by handling expense tracking for you.
With SureBooks accounting services, you can rest assured that your expenses are being monitored and accurately recorded in your business books. We are here to track your expenses so that we can provide you with up-to-date information on the financial state of your business. We then use this information and our expert accounting services to aid you with important business decisions.
SureBooks accounting services are offered by qualified and experienced accountants. The pairing of our professional accountants with our use of the latest accounting software means that you can have peace of mind with our accounting services. We create the perfect partnership between your needs for business expense tracking and our accounting services.
At SureBooks, we continuously strive to offer accounting services that will increase the value of your business. Through efficient and effective financial management with our accounting services, your business will always be in excellent hands. Allow us to handle your business finances and business expense tracking with our accounting services, while you handle creating a business that will leave a legacy.
The Importance of Tracking Business Expenses:
We have highlighted the important reasons why every business must track its business expenses.
1) Budget:
Whether your business is a large corporation or a small business operating from your home, your business needs a budget. Your budget is your spending plan for every operating month and will be used to guide your business. If your business budget is inaccurate and has minimal detail, you are leading your business towards failure as you are not taking into account important expenses your business will be accruing every month. Creating a budget, therefore, needs to be done carefully so that you can ensure your spending is monitored and that you are pushing your business towards success.
Tracking your expenses will allow you to assess whether or not your business is remaining within the allocated budget. Tracking your expenses will also demonstrate whether your budget has been created accurately, and will also allow you to make any alterations to the budget should you need to. By tracking your business expenses, you can make sure that you are sticking to your business budget.
2) Prepared for Tax Season:
One of the major benefits of tracking your expenses is that your business will be prepared for the tax season. By tracking and keeping records of all your expenses, you can easily submit these required documents with your tax report to receive tax reductions. By tracking your expenses, you are ultimately saving your business on tax expenses. We have listed a few tax-deductible business expenses to keep track of.
Office Supplies: From computer software to office equipment to stationary, all of these elements are important for business operations and thus can be put towards your tax reductions.
Rent: If you rent a business premise or pay rent to use office space at home, you can use your rent expense to receive a tax reduction.
Travel: Should you need to fly across the world to assess manufacturing processes or meet with suppliers or simply drive down the road to have lunch with a client, these all fall into business travel expenses which can be used to reduce your tax.
Accounting Services: The accounting services you use to monitor your business’s expenses and assist you during tax season also fall into the tax-deductible category.
3) Prevent Financial Strain:
Every business owner understands that even the smallest wrong decision can have disastrous consequences for the financial security of the business. Tracking your business expenses allows you to have a clear understanding of the financial situation of your business and whether or not the spending decisions you are making are benefiting the business.
Tracking your expenses will highlight any poor spending habits or unnecessary expenses that could be leading your business into a state of financial stress or bankruptcy. By taking the time to track your business expenses, you are taking an important step towards preventing your business from ending up in a financial crisis.
4) Monitor Employees:
Tracking your expenses is a simple way to monitor your employees. While every business likes to believe that their employees are reliable, there are far too many cases where the trust of a business was being taken advantage of by employees. We have outlined a few ways in which employee actions can be affecting business finances.
Petty Cash: Many businesses have a petty cash supply to provide customers with change, to reimburse employees for business expenses, or to pay for daily business expenses such as parking tickets or office coffee. If your business’s petty cash is not closely monitored or there are no stringent petty cash policies in place, this creates an opening for opportunistic employees.
Stolen Supplies: From a few “misplaced” office pens to missing items in inventory counts, stolen supplies can quickly start impacting the financial state of a business. By not tracking your expenses, these stolen supplies will go unnoticed.
Time Theft: Time theft refers to employees who are producing inaccurate time logs to receive payment for hours they have not worked. This is often due to a loophole in the business system which enables employees to manipulate their work hours in their favour.
By tracking your expenses, you can keep an eye on your business’s monthly costs and be alerted to any irregularities or extreme expenses. This will then allow you to investigate the problem and arrive at a cost-saving solution. By openly tracking your business expenses, you are also alerting your employees that any unexpected expenses will be noticed and this will reduce the likelihood of employees acting in malicious ways against your business.
5) Plan for the Future:
Every business needs to constantly plan for the future to stay on top of their industry, competitors, and continuously meet their client needs. Tracking your current expenses allows you to make informed decisions that will have an impact on the path of your business. Tracking your expenses also allows you to create reachable goals for your business that you can work towards.
Ensure the success of your business with SureBooks accounting services and our top business expense tracking tips.
