There's an illusion out there that you can simply look at your bank balance and judge how healthy your business is. While that may be somewhat true for select businesses, it is certainly not true for interior designers. One of the most common questions we receive is how much cash on hand is really mine and how much is client funds?
Choosing the optimal billing method is critical to streamlining your interior design accounting process and freeing up cash flow. Learn more about setting your rates, selecting a billing method, and the implications at tax time.
Accounting for interior designers can be complex — but it doesn’t have to be. Learn more about streamlining procurement, developing a budgeting process, and the difference between cash and accrual accounting.
Tools – Invoicing and Integrated Customer Payments
There will often be times where a software may not connect to your accounting software, but you can still automate the entry of data through an excel upload template. Bookkeeping automation is about getting your data entered as quickly and accurately as possible so that you can analyze your data and use it to drive your business’ performance. You should always be thinking of ways to streamline and improve processes. Excel upload templates essentially act as bridge connection on your wagon wheel when a direct connection doesn’t exist. In accounting softwares like Xero or QuickBooks Online, you can upload contact data like vendor or customer information, but you are also able to upload transaction data for bills, invoices, or credits. Xero stands out in this area due to its open platform and the fact that excel data importing is an included function of the software (see Why Xero instead of QuickBooks link). QuickBooks allows transaction uploads, but it’s provided through other vendors who charge for the service.
What is the maximum amount of revenue you can generate based on your current processes and systems? This answer to the “Maximum Capacity” question should serve as a target for you before making any changes within your business. It also serves as a gauge of when to ramp up staffing and beef up your internal systems and processes.
In today’s post, we’re going to review the concept of a “burden rate” and why it is important. This term may have differing names by industry or have varying calculation methods, but the underlying reason for doing it is the same: you must know the cost it takes you to produce revenue. Let’s look at an example to illustrate this point.
We’ve spent time discussing the structure of bookkeeping and the necessary tools to get a complete and accurate product. In this section, we’re turning our focus to a second layer of tracking called project accounting. This adds another level of complexity to the accounting process, but with the right system, it can be done efficiently and effectively. Often times the success or failure of a project-based business is determined by how well they can execute this process.
Most businesses have a disjointed process for submitting, reviewing, and approving purchase requests. Many don’t have a process at all. If you’ve spent anytime using a spreadsheet to track purchase requests, you know firsthand how difficult, time consuming, and frustrating this process can be. A poor functioning purchasing system leads to a disconnect between your company’s financial goals and what actually gets spent. There is a solution though and it functions within the wagon wheel of your automated bookkeeping system! A simple purchase request system that is integrated with your accounting software will bring enhanced financial controls to your business, align your actual spending with your budget, and improve communication between accounting and operations.
The wagon wheel concept is a visual representation of how multiple accounting applications come together to form a unified, customized system. It involves decentralizing the modules of a typical accounting system to gain automation and efficiency from the technology advances. When we talk about the wagon wheel, the primary accounting software sits in the middle of the diagram. Around the spokes of the wheel are all the singular modules that solve a specific problem. The goal with this concept is to leverage the strength of each application to create the best possible accounting system.