by Priscilla Plancke
The potential to reduce or eliminate paper from an office environment has been a concept since the mid-1990s, and it has taken this long to finally become a reality that is cost effective, and compliant with ATO’s requirements for business record keeping.
“We’re now seeing a generational shift of people who grew up with the internet as a fact of life, who have less of a connection to physical documents, who are less likely to print out emails to read them at leisure, and more willing to trust digital documents. We’re also now in an era in which electronic tax returns being lodged online are the norm, and many other interactions with the government can be carried out without resort to paper.” Joseph Robins, GoCardless
But what does this mean for businesses?
This is where virtual bookkeeping can help give you freedom to use your accountant as an advisory service, rather than the costly number-crunching service that was expected of them; that stuff was meant to be done in your office. At the end of the day, your accountant only needs to know the bottom line to put through a BAS or Tax return.
Without having to do the costly basic accounting book work, your accountant can now offer more useful and practical advice on how you should invest for the future, modify your business practices, find new sales opportunities and so on. Many accountants are now offering accounting and bookkeeping services since the distinction has started to be recognised within the accounting field.
BOOKKEEPING IS THE ONLY WORD THAT IS SPELT WITH THREE CONSECUTIVE DOUBLE LETTERS!
With virtual bookkeeping you, now, can affordably have someone else spend all that time doing what is boring, tiring but necessary: financial paperwork. Finally you can concentrate on what you really want to do, which is to run and grow your business. All you need is a laptop on a desk, a smartphone in the pocket, a handful of secure online accounting and payment processing apps… and nothing else.
NO FILING CABINETS, NO IN-TRAYS OR OUT-TRAYS, NO STORING OF PAPERWORK FOR 7 YEARS, NO PILES OF INVOICES AND RECEIPTS TO BE RECORDED AND PROCESSED MANUALLY BY HAND.
Who needs a shoe box?
No need for boxes of receipts and invoices every month. Instead, you can now photograph receipts, and upload the photos into your accounting software. You can share access electronically and have the data processed by a bookkeeper, online, before talking to the accountant about making cash flow projections, sales and revenue forecasts. Having an online accounting system allows you to run reports covering almost any financial angle you can imagine. This also allows a manager to be employed to help convert and translate the data into business expansion.
What used to take days can now be done in minutes.
Bank account reconciliation is done without having to sweat over printed statements, because all transactions are tracked and compared with bank balances. Payments are recorded automatically and ageing reports calculated instantly.
Invoices can be sent electronically from the same software and are likely to be paid faster, because customers can click ‘pay now’ buttons to send secure payments. Customer now prefer to sign-up for automatic payments such as direct debit, which can be streamlined and automated.
Is the ATO OK with electronic record keeping?
Finally, the answer is YES. It only took close to 30 years for the ATO to allow software expansion to make this a reality.
"Electronic records - Documents that you are required to keep can be in written or electronic form. If you make paper or electronic copies they must be a true and clear reproduction of the original. We recommend that if you store your records electronically you make a backup copy to ensure the evidence is easily accessible if the original becomes inaccessible or unreadable – for example, where a hard drive is corrupted." https://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Income-and-deductions/In-detail/Keeping-your-tax-records/
And that is how we can offer you such affordable services at Tradies Bookkeeping .Com.
Through the use of virtual bookkeeping using your preferred accounting software, Tradies Bookkeeping .Com is able to provide you a service that saves you thousands in overheads while giving you the opportunity to tailor a solution to service your needs: your way and at your budget.
Software giant, Intuit QuickBooks, is our preferred online accounting software that allows accountants and bookkeepers to manage a large group of clients using the same software. With automatic notifications of clients’ transactions and requests to upload documents that can be passed onto to the client to either process themselves or have the option to have us process the transaction for a fee.
The table reproduced below from Intuit QuickBooks is the current pricing for online accounting software plus GST. Having an accounting package that is current and up to date with all ATO changes and requirements is crucial to get accurate figures, the most cost effective way for both you and us.
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