Wouldn’t it be great to have more time? With recent reports showing that admin takes small businesses up to 28 hours a week, we’re offering some advice about how to save time on one aspect - accounting.
In the news, there are positive reports that lending is up, but the UK high street experienced the worse month since the start of the recession.
Top news stories
Net lending to UK small businesses up for second quarter of 2015
Net lending from banks and building societies to small businesses rose to £490m in the second quarter of 2015.
Small businesses will need superfast broadband 'in the next five years'
The government’s leading advisory group on broadband found that downstream demand for small businesses will rise from 5Mbps in 2015 to 8.1Mbps in 2025.
Thousands of British micro-businesses receive demands for VAT from Irish Revenue
Despite registering for VATMOSS, 2000 small businesses received letters from the Irish Revenue requesting payments for VAT on digital products. The Irish Revenue said the demands were a ‘system error’.
UK high street has worse month since 2008
Retail sales fell by 4.3% on the year before, the biggest drop since November 2008 and the sixth monthly fall this year. Poor weather and a rise in foreign holidays have been blamed.
Tablets will replace laptops in the office within 10 years
In a survey, 31% of UK workers said that laptop usage in the workplace is declining and 24% have already switched to tablets.
Key dates for your diary
Next month: key legislation changes, including an increase in minimum wage.
How to save time on your accounts
Sometimes it feels like we don’t have enough time, so finding ways to do everyday tasks more quickly can make a massive difference. Here are some of our suggestions for ways to save time on managing your finances.
Automate as much as you can
Everything from backing up to bank reconciliation can be automated, so do make sure you’re making the most of these features.
You can also customise your software to match your needs. Make sure the categories you use in your software match the way you do business and look to see if you can customise layouts or create specific reports. Saving these settings means you’ll always have the insights you need at the click of a button.
Save time on repeated tasks
Recurring tasks are not only time consuming, they’re also pretty soul-destroying. But our software lets you manage recurring transactions more easily, freeing up the time for other jobs. Details of how to do this are available in our support area in Ask Sage:
- Recurring bank entries in Sage 50 Accounts and Sage Instant Accounts
- Recurring sales entries in Sage 50 Accounts
- Recurring invoices and orders in Sage 50 Accounts
- Recurring income in Sage One
- Recurring expenses in Sage One
Make use of the cloud
If you still prepare and send information to your accountant, you may be missing a trick. By connecting your software to the cloud, you and your accountant can see the same data and make changes in real-time. All our accounts software, from Sage One to Sage 50, allows you to connect to the cloud.
Connect up your software
If you use more than one Sage product, do spend a couple of minutes connecting them together. You can import data from Sage payroll software and from Sage Pay, which helps to keep your data current and saves time on manually updating transactions.
Keep up to date
Newer software is often faster and has new features which help you automate tasks, saving you even more time. For example, changes to Sage 50 Accounts such as one-click navigation and the ability to customise screens meant users could complete tasks almost twice as quickly. So it definitely pays to stay on the most up-to-date version.