$$$ Dollars Making Sense $$$
This last weeks been a pretty tough one for me; work wise – the weight of staff absences has hit me suddenly like a freight train and combined with the extended BAS due date it’s been a recipe for long hours and little sleep. Personally; my absence from home is getting more difficult as my children get older and are able to articulate their feelings more clearly – and then play on them! It hasn’t been the most fun week in the world, but this is life – we all have our challenging weeks.
It’s during weeks like these that I look for the little things to be grateful for and I had a moment of reflection yesterday though as I was looking at a clients portal report… that’s a report which amongst many other things tells me how much the client has paid in Pay As You Go Instalments to the ATO. The dollar figure was just sitting there on the page ready for me to use and I literally laughed out loud because 15 years ago, we’d have to ring the ATO and sit on hold for 20 minutes to get that one same figure. Technology has changed the accounting industry in the most amazing way. The things that we as accountants can access now gives us so much opportunity to provide value to clients and while I realise this is very accountant dorky – that makes me really excited.
From a client side, the change has possibly been greater. When I first began in the industry we were dealing with 30 plus column cashbooks and now it’s bank feeds and auto reconciliations. The amount of time being saved by cloud accounting packages is amazing and the fact that clients can now use electronic filing which is built into software and can throw out documents instead of having to manually file literally blows my mind (again dorky accountant!)
If you are in small business and you or your bookkeeper are not using bank feeds and/or electronic filing, then you are spending more time on your accounts than necessary.
I’m speaking at a workshop on Wednesday night going through cloud accounting programs, pros and cons of each with live demonstrations. It’s being held at Warehouse #5 here at Burleigh and I recommend coming along if you are still using a desktop program, aren’t happy with your current program or aren’t using the features I mentioned above. Tickets available here.
IQ Accountants | Gold Coast Accountants | Dollars Making Sense
