Monday 11 March 2013

4 Reasons Why You Should Avoid Doing Your Own Bookkeeping And Accounts...

By: Graham Eden



There are many reasons why doing your own bookkeeping is a bad idea.

But I think the biggest reason of all is that DIY bookkeeping can lead you to make mistakes that can cost you much more than the bookkeeping fee you´re trying to avoid.

And this all stems from either a lack of skill or a lack of organization.

Here are 4 key areas that cause business owners to over pay on their taxes and waste days of their precious time...

Lack of Accounting Software Knowledge

First if you want to do your own bookkeeping you need to keep all the data somewhere. And that somewhere will be in either a spreadsheet or in an online acounts package.

The challenge comes when, to use these tools well, you need to have a good understanding of how business accounts work. If you don´t, you can easily start misposting things to the wrong cost and revenue codes and this in turn can cost you in terms of an accountant´s time to unravel the mess.

Not only that but you´ll rarely get any data from your accounts and bookkeeping software that will help you when it comes to running your business.

That´s why GRAHAM EDEN, a Bromsgrove Accountant, created StartRight for you so you don´t have to do any of this.



Losing Records

Another result of keeping your own records is business owners often misplace their important receipts. These receipts all add up and are a wasted opportunity to write off some of the tax you have to pay at the end of the year.

Also this data should be included in your accounts so you can see where you’re spending money so you can ensure you keep costs under control.

Knowing What To Claim For And What NOT To Claim For

Another big issue we see time and again from business owners that do their own bookkeeping is inaccurate claiming of expenses in terms of tax deductible costs.

It would be great if every single expense in our entire lives could be claimed against our business, but this just simply isn’t the case.

There are certain rules and tolerances for different expenses and you can’t just claim for every receipt you find. They have to be relevant to your business and eligible for tax deduction.

StartRight works out what will or will not be acceptable.

So if you’re doing your own books, watch out and make sure you don’t cross the line!

Missing deadlines

Lastly, one of the biggest hidden costs for business owners that do their own bookkeeping is being penalised for late submission of their accounts and tax returns.

When you use a system and a service like StartRight all of this is taken care of for you and your accounts team will be able to track the required due date and schedule all the necessary paperwork to be completed and submitted on time.

The reason we created StartRight is there are so many pitfalls in the complex world of bookkeeping and time and again small business owners fall foul of them.

So if you’re looking for a Bromsgrove Accountant that can save you time and money then using StartRight is one of the best ideas you’ll have all year.


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