• Accounting
• 2021-06-16
• Mr. Wasim Firoz

Avoid these Common Mistakes in Small Business Accounting

Business owners have to face different challenges to run the business but the accounting department is not also different.  To manage your accounting is a different task where you wear different task hats in your daily routine.  Small Business owners don’t have enough budget to arrange all the resources.

 Lack of financial resources can create errors, mistakes, etc in bookkeeping, Inaccurate books, over-reported profit, etc. When these types of issues occur then businesses have to face big problems in finance. If we don’t correct the accounting issues, they can harm the business after a long time, like downsizing the business, making the business financially weak, etc.

It’s best for the small business to keep awareness about the common accounting problems so that you know well what to do and not, and how to overcome the problems.

Small business owners often make these mistakes in their business accounts.

1. Not keeping full information about the business finance.
   Being a good business owner, it’s your responsibility to know the financial health of the business. To know about it you should know how accounting and bookkeeping work and how to consider business financial health. If you don’t understand it then you can’t take better action or make a decision for business future. A small business owner should have awareness of the assets & liabilities standing and where is your cash and how much. Often business owners make one big common mistake, they think we are doing good in business just because we have cash in the bank. If you don’t compare your cash to liabilities, you can’t assume that you are doing good. Business owners should compare their business liabilities to cash so that they can see where they stand. 
   
   
2. Rely on Accounting Software.
   We can detect accounting errors and mistakes easily while manual auditing. But small businesses can’t detect it because they totally rely on accounting software. Small owner thinks we have purchased the accounting software. Now we don’t need to worry regarding the accounting and bookkeeping, but they should perform the audit process to ensure every transaction has been recorded properly, There is no error in the spreadsheet, etc. Sonner, you will realize that all the errors are not detected by the software. Errors and mistakes in accounting become a huge problem for your business after a long period.
   
   Don’t rely totally on the accounting software but set one particular time for an audit. Please don’t think that we should not use accounting software. Well, accounting software is good. It saves time, money, effort but it can’t detect all types of errors and mistakes.
   
   
3. Updating Records Infrequently.
   When you don’t record the transaction daily then it is easy for the errors to enter your accounting system. And sometimes small businesses avoid recording the small business transaction.
   
   It doesn’t matter which type of accounting transaction has been done, we should always record the single transaction accurately and timely to prevent unrecorded data.
   
   
4. Not keep backup of old financial records.
   Businesses make one common mistake that they don’t keep back up the old financial records, they store the data in one place that would be an external hard drive, computer, and paper.  They don’t think, what if we lost the data accidentally then there is no way to recover and we know the power and importance of the old data.
   
   Smart business owners keep their accounting data and others in two places. Generally, they use the cloud backup site to store the business financial data.
   
   By storing data in the cloud, you can access your data from anywhere and anytime in the world just you need an internet connection.
   
   Old financial data helps the business to fix errors and mistakes. By using cloud backup you can easily restore the data into the system and fix the errors and mistakes easily and also in a short time.
   
   
5. Financial Health.
   Bookkeeping and accounting define where your business stands. Successful business owners don’t take any action blindly. They analyze the business finance health to know where their business finance stands, after that, they make any decision for business growth. By doing this business owners can choose the best way among no. of ways. It helps the business owner to invest a particular amount in the project. 
   
   If businesses don’t analyze the business finance health then it’s easy to invest unnecessary amounts on the project, software, expenses, etc which is not beneficial for the business. 
   
   

Final Thought

To start a business is easy but to drive a business toward success is not easy. Accounting and bookkeeping are a major part of the business. Being good business owners, we should record every financial transaction properly and also do the business accounting audit to identify the mistake, error, etc into the business accounts. By doing these we can know the business is financially healthy. 

If you have any issues and query contact risians accounting.