Being an entrepreneur and owning your own business is awesome. You can follow your passion. You can call your own shots. You can offer a product or service you believe in. You can do your own bookkeeping.
Wait?!? Bookkeeping?
Unfortunately, being your own boss means you have to take the good with the bad. The highs with the lows. The exciting with the boring.
Fortunately, anyone can hire a bookkeeper. But that costs money which might be in short supply in many small businesses and upstart organizations.
How to Master QuickBooks Online
The good news is using QuickBooks Online, a Mom Entrepreneur can do much of the basic work herself. This saves money, something crucial when you’re starting out on your own.
Sure, an accountant may still be needed to make a few adjustments and prepare the tax return, but if the business already has the basic transactions in QuickBooks Online, the accountant can access the business and do the work faster and more efficiently. That saves the entrepreneur money.
Tip:
To allow an accountant access to your company, while in QuickBooks Online just select “Team” in the navigation bar and add a user.
Don’t have an accountant?
QuickBooks Online can help you find one. They can provide a list of accountants for you. Some are certified as QuickBooks experts and they call these experts, Proadvisors. QuickBooks can help you contact one if you need help for a fee.
Why Choose QuickBooks Online?
Here are another 4 good reasons to use QuickBooks Online. other than saving money.
1. More than Accounting Software
First, QuickBooks Online is NOT just accounting software. Think of it as business software. An entrepreneur can track her expenses, input sales, track receivables, manage time, process payroll, and on and on.
2. Payroll When You Build a Team
QuickBooks Online is expandable to grow with your needs. Maybe at first, you don’t have any employees. Later you bring in an employee to help you but you want to save money and track payroll yourself. QuickBooks Online allows for that.
If later you have several employees and you want QuickBooks Online to do the payroll for you so you can free up time to do something else, QuickBooks Online does that too.
3. Help When Receivables Get Out of Hand
Many small businesses struggle with receivables.
Let’s say an entrepreneur owns a party planning business. She gives clients amazing parties that they would never have pulled off on their own. At the end of the party, she provides an invoice to the client. Now it is on to the next party and gaining the next client. Unfortunately, receivables can get out of hand and cause a real cash-flow problem.
Fortunately, QuickBooks Online has reports, reminders, and tools to help manage those receivables with as little effort as possible.
Related: Are Accounting Roles the Answer to Closing the Motherhood Gap?
4. Minimal Outlay
Notice I keep saying QuickBooks Online instead of just plain QuickBooks. That is because there are different versions of QuickBooks. There is also a desktop version. Most small business owners choose QuickBooks Online because you can pay a small monthly fee and it is scalable.
How to Get Started with Quickbooks Online
I would like to say QuickBooks Online is a breeze to learn. But it can be a little tricky. Not everything is intuitive. What I like to tell people interested in using QuickBooks Online is that there is a steep learning curve, but once you get over the curve it is all downhill. Learning to take control of your business and bookkeeping is very doable.
Quickbooks Online Rapid Training
That is why I made a short yet thorough course specifically for helping small business owners learn to use QuickBooks Online. The course begins with an overview of the difference between QuickBooks Online and the QuickBooks Desktop.
Next, is a tour of the software and its capabilities. I’ll explain what add-on tools you could use and which ones you can put off until later to save money now.
Next, you go through the basic transactions of any small business. You learn managing sales, tracking costs, paying bills, and running reports.
After these lessons, you get an assignment to practice what you’ve learned on your own. So, it is NOT just watching but practising.
Don’t have QuickBooks Online yet?
That is fine. I show you how to use a free sample company to do the homework so you don’t have to buy the software until you decide to use it for your business.
I am offering readers of Inspiring Mompreneurs, a coupon to give you the best deal possible on my course. The course normally goes for $24.99 but for the next 30 days, you can buy the course for only $12.99 using the promo code below.
To access the course, go to: www.udemy.com/quickbooks-online-rapid-training.
Use Promo Code: MomEntrepreneursRock
All courses have a money-back guarantee.
I hope you enjoyed learning about taking control of your own bookkeeping. If I can be of any assistance, please let me know.
About the Author
Eric Knight CPA, DBA, CGMA
I have been a CPA since 1996, working in public accounting, government, and private industry.
One day I was asked to help teach a course and I was hooked. I have been an educator ever since.
I now teach and develop online courses that can help small business owners. Find out more at www.AccountingHound.com
