Ed Sheeran may have been raised watching the sunset from the castle on a hill, but in my rather less picturesque northern town, I was raised watching old Gene Kelly movies and baking with my Grandpa in his galley kitchen.
Two things he made clear: 1) Always wash the dishes as you go. 2) it’s mandatory to lick the bowl.
Unfortunately, I have failed to instil the first into my baking fiend of a daughter. As she skips merrily upstairs having produced some delicious cookies, I am confronted by a pile of dirty dishes and a floury mess. The job of cleaning up always seems twice as hard and takes four times as long than if she had just washed the dishes as she went along.
It’s the same with some of the accountancy tasks you need to do as a business owner.
Here are some examples of how doing things as you go along makes the task less onerous.
For those using Xero, reconcile your bank transactions once a week to keep from being confronted with 513 unreconciled transactions every few months. You may also want to take a leaf out of my daughter’s book and leave the task to someone else. If so get in touch!
Whenever you take out a new loan, hire purchase or rental agreement send us a copy of the agreement straight away for our records to save the hunt later in the year.
Have regular financial updates to help decision making. Hive can help you by throughout the year. Access to useful, easy to understand data together with a trend analysis, enables you to analyse what is and isn’t working in your business.
At present, HMRC only requires us a little to adopt the ‘tidy as you go’ principle. Even those not on PAYE need to pay some tax part way through the year under the payments on account system (the deadline for your second payment on account is the 31st July; get in touch if you need details of how much and who to pay).
In the future, something that may or may not look like ‘making tax digital’ will require us to provide timely information to HMRC. So getting into the habit of keeping your finances up to date now will put you in good stead.
As we know, cultivating habits takes thought and effort to begin with, but in the long run, can make something feel effortless.
On that note, I’m off to teach my daughter (again) where we keep the washing-up liquid…
To discuss how Hive can help you understand your dental business and develop good habits, please get in touch on 01872 300232 or email us at hello@hivebusiness.co.uk.
