After starting three small businesses, I’ve learned first-hand the headaches that accounting causes for most small business owners. It’s one of those back-office tasks that never crosses your mind when you decide to run your own business, and yet it sucks up your day and makes running a successful business that much harder.
But there’s hope, and it starts with getting organized. Here are five tips I’ve learned by helping business owners trying to tackle their accounting:
Keep it separate
That new backpack for your kids isn’t a business expense, but your business credit card was handy so you used it.
Sure, you can pay back your business for a personal expenditure, or the other way around, but if you’re going to do it right, you actually have to record an accounting transaction. Things get complicated fast, and you don’t need that headache.
By keeping separate bank and credit card accounts for business and personal, you’ll save yourself hours of work and make it easy to keep track of deductible expenses in one place. Some applications can automatically handle the behind-the-scenes accounting for crossover expenses, but even so, we recommend handling business and personal finances as independently as possible.
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