As an accounting manager /administrator and/or bookeeper for your business, how much time do you spend on your accounting routine? As a freelancer, without a team to do this for you, have you ever stopped to think about the time you spend organizing your finances?
As an accounting manager for your business, still using an Excel sheet?
Currently, whenever people come to me asking me for a finance tip and I start asking about their financial routine, I always get the following answers: As an accounting manager for my translation business, I have an Excel spreadsheet (which I barely fill out) or do paper checks (notepad, Post-it, desktop). And there is never, ever, financial planning in the short or medium term in my accounting managerial activity. In other words, they don’t know if they can parcel out a new computer, for example, for the simple fact that they do not know what their turnover is (just an approximate idea, according to the volume of work).
Be in Control of Your Finance
I don’t know about you, but as an accounting manager for my translation business, this lack of information is not for me: I need to be in control of my money all the time. How much, in cash, I am making at the moment (but I have not yet charged), how much I am to receive and, finally, how much I have already received and information I must send to my professional accounting manage. But it is not possible to waste time with this information, nor to produce and collect it. You, like me, as a freelancer, know that our most valuable tool is TIME. And if we spend our time organizing ourselves (albeit effectively), we don’t produce – and consequently – we don’t make money.
Accounting managerial skills at work
Recently, I had an experience working with my financial management app that, honestly, proved to be valuable in gaining the skills I always recommend to other people – Organization, discipline and attention to finance, as well as my translations.
A customer happened to contact me asking to review the amounts he had already paid, as he believed he was paying me in duplicate. Of course, anyone can say that it doesn’t take much discipline to resolve this, just go to your online banking and take a copy of your statement. Yes and no. If you do that, you have to remember (and I am terrible at remembering anything) when the customer paid you or, as I said before, you will waste time doing this check. And that was the big problem! I accessed my accounting software and had two exact invoices paid, one due and the other for the following month. In 30 seconds, I had all the necessary information, I passed it on to my client and the problem was solved. Now he knows what amount he owes me and what he had already paid (none in duplicate). What’s what a good accounting manager should be able to do.
By returning with the information in 30 seconds (which, in any other way, I would take at least 1 hour), I saved my time (continuing to dedicate myself to translating during the day), avoided mistakes (because the information there was correct) and I avoided stress (both for me and my client).
And if it didn’t take me long to collect this information, even less I would have spent to produce it. For efficient control, whatever the method, discipline is the only way. So, whenever a new project arrives, I launch it on my accounting managerial tool as soon as I receive the client’s acceptance.
Good Accounting Managerial Skills Are Good for Your Stress Level
It is a calming factor for me, and for my stress level, as an accounting manager for my translation business, to know where the money is. So, in times of despair, when I think I’m ‘going bankrupt’, I open my accounting tool and see all the data straight away.
That is why financial control is so important, especially when we are CEO, head of accounting, coffee barista and janitor of our company. We cannot delegate these tasks, except to ourselves. And in a busy routine, as I know, yours is, you can’t waste time on inefficient accounting management.
It is very important, then, that you coldly analyse your financial control: as an accounting manager for your translation business, does it meet all your needs, both in information management and time management? Because if it doesn’t meet one of these requirements, now it may be the ideal time for you to change and do differently in 2020, adding time to your day to day, to be able to dedicate yourself to what really matters: your translation business.
I decided to change years ago and drop Excel for an accounting managerial tool call Wave Accounting: This tool is an online tool, and contains all my accounting managerial information so that I am now more organized financially in 2020. I strongly recommend it!
