With graduation photos flooding Facebook this month, I thought I’d take readers back to the first job out of college for Prosperity Bookkeeping owner Kristie Van Pay. Kristie was the office manager for a collision repair center. She answered phones, did the bookkeeping, and kept the office running smoothly. Her reviews were always great - except for one thing, her phone etiquette. As much as Kristie wanted to please her boss, she just wanted to rip her ears off when she had to answer the phone! Phone calls distracted her from what she really loved to do – bookkeeping.

When running a small business, every entrepreneur runs into “pain points,” like Kristie’s phone calls. For many small business owners, their pain points involve financial tasks, leading to stress and frustration. In this article, we explore five common bookkeeping pain points that many small businesses struggle with. Plus, we’ll explain how Prosperity Bookkeeping, an experienced virtual bookkeeper and QuickBooks ProAdvisor, can help alleviate these bookkeeping pain points by utilizing QuickBooks Online.

Bookkeeping Pain Point 1: Time-Consuming Data Entry

One of the most significant bookkeeping challenges for small businesses is the time-consuming task of manual data entry. Entrepreneurs often struggle to maintain accurate and up-to-date financial records, which can lead to errors and delays in decision-making. However, an experienced virtual bookkeeper can streamline this process by utilizing QuickBooks Online's automated features.

By integrating bank accounts, credit cards, and other financial institutions with QuickBooks Online, the bookkeeper can import transactions directly. This significantly reduces the time and effort required for manual data entry, allowing entrepreneurs to focus on their core business activities.

Bookkeeping Pain Point 2: Inefficient Expense Tracking

Tracking business expenses is critical for maintaining financial health and maximizing tax deductions. However, small business owners often struggle to manage and categorize expenses effectively. With QuickBooks Online, a virtual bookkeeper can help clients streamline expense tracking.

By utilizing the QuickBooks Online mobile app, entrepreneurs can easily capture and categorize expenses on the go. Receipts can be scanned and attached to transactions, ensuring a complete and organized record. Prosperity Bookkeeping can further assist by setting up expense categories and creating rules to automatically categorize recurring expenses accurately.

Bookkeeping Pain Point 3: Poor Cash Flow Management

Maintaining a healthy cash flow is vital for the success of any small business. However, it can be challenging to track and manage cash flow effectively without proper bookkeeping systems in place. A virtual bookkeeper, leveraging QuickBooks Online, can help clients gain better control over their cash flow.

By setting up customized reports in QuickBooks Online, Prosperity Bookkeeping gives clients insights into cash inflows and outflows, identifies trends, and highlights potential issues. Prosperity Bookkeeping can also create cash flow forecasts. These forecasts enable small businesses to make informed decisions and take proactive measures to ensure they have adequate cash on hand for operating expenses and business growth.

Bookkeeping Pain Point 4: Lack of Financial Reporting

Accurate and timely financial reporting is essential for evaluating business performance, securing funding, and making strategic decisions. However, many small business owners struggle to generate comprehensive financial reports. QuickBooks Online offers a range of reporting options that a virtual bookkeeper can leverage to provide valuable insights.

Prosperity Bookkeeping customizes reports in QuickBooks Online to reflect specific business needs, such as profit and loss statements, balance sheets, and cash flow reports. Additionally, Prosperity Bookkeeping can generate comparative reports to track performance over time, making it easier for entrepreneurs to identify trends, measure growth, and identify areas for improvement.

Bookkeeping Pain Point 5: Tax Compliance Challenges

Tax compliance can be overwhelming, especially for small business owners who are not well-versed in tax regulations. An experienced virtual bookkeeper, skilled in QuickBooks Online, can help clients navigate the complexities of tax compliance.

By utilizing QuickBooks Online's tax features, Prosperity Bookkeeping can accurately track expenses, categorize transactions for tax purposes, and generate reports to simplify tax preparation. When it comes time to file taxes (potentially a major pain point for businesses with messy books), Prosperity Bookkeeping collaborates with the client's tax professional, ensuring stress-free and timely filing of tax returns.

We Take the Pain Out of Bookkeeping

Bookkeeping pain points can pose significant challenges for small businesses, affecting their financial health and overall success. However, by partnering with an experienced virtual bookkeeper who is a QuickBooks ProAdvisor, entrepreneurs can overcome these obstacles. Prosperity Bookkeeping offers a range of features that streamline data entry, expense tracking, cash flow management, financial reporting, and tax filing. Contact Kristie at Prosperity Bookkeeping to schedule a free consultation – and smooth out the bookkeeping pain points that challenge you.

About the Author: Once a mild-mannered reporter and editor, Joan Koehne took on the persona of her alter ego, Wonder Writer, to launch Writer to the Rescue, the content writing division of Packerland Websites. Wonder Writer is “saving the world one word at a time” with power-packed content marketing for digital and traditional media outlets.