I’m a Chartered Accountant and I love Excel.
There, I’ve said it! What can I say, Excel is s fantastic tool. It’s served me well over my 25 year plus career, both in practice and industry. Whether it’s been forecasts to support a business plan, financial modelling of M&A transactions, monthly management accounts, annual budgets, investment appraisal of major capital expenditure projects, lease or buy decisions, KPI & bench-marking analysis, ratio analysis, the list is endless. In the right hands, Excel has and continues to be a great friend.
But what about small business book-keeping? Well, I have to confess some time ago I moved on to Cloud accountancy products, such as Quickbooks and Xero.
Yes, if you’re a start-up or micro business and you’re not VAT registered, Excel can still be a good place to start your book-keeping journey. You’ll need a well thought-out set of spreadsheets, which enable you to reconcile your bank account, analyse income and expenses into key categories, make claims for business expenditure paid for from personal funds and capture other accounting information (e.g. stocks, debtors, creditors, fixed assets).
However, is you’re not a strong Excel user, if your business is or is likely to be caught up in the Making Tax Digital (MTD) system, if you want financial reports at your finger-tips, if you’d like to reduce the time you spend on book-keeping, you really ought to think about moving on to one of the MTD-compliant Cloud accountancy solutions.
But be careful – these products aren’t ‘silver-bullet’ solutions. Despite the glossy TV advertisements, you can’t just buy them and get started without any thought. You have to invest time in setting them up properly; you have to understand how to use them effectively.
Whether it’s automatic bank feeds, fast reconciling of your bank account, easy sales invoicing, scanning of expense receipts, MTD tax returns or the various reports available to assess financial performance, they are well worth the investment of time and money.
Certainly, Excel still has its place for most things and I’ll remain a loyal fan. But when it comes to small business book-keeping, it may be time to consider a move.
If you need advice on accountancy, financial control & reporting and how Cloud solutions may help, get in touch for a no-obligation, free discussion – see our Contact Us page for how to reach me.
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