Without accurate and up-to-date records of your business finances, you run the risk of losing track of your expenses relative to your income. You can end up with negative cash flow, which can be disastrous for small businesses. For small business owners, time is precious. Therefore, you need to ensure that the expense tracking methods you use are as efficient, accurate, and sustainable as possible.
This helps you track your spending and make informed decisions about how much you spend. It’s rare to meet an entrepreneur who actually enjoys the process of paying taxes. This can be time consuming and confusing, and any mistakes can result in significant penalties.
For most businesses, providing income records is easy. Who doesn’t like calculating profits? But when it comes to tracking costs, it’s easy to lose discipline.
Losing track of your business expenses throughout the year can leave you with the unenviable task of sifting through months of bank statements and stacks of receipts as deadlines approach. Not only is this tedious and stressful, but it’s also error-prone. Keeping track of your expenses regularly doesn’t have to be such a hassle. It requires a small, regular approach, which is made easier with accounting software like Xero.
How do small businesses record expenses? Gone are the days when receipts sat in a drawer or invoices gathered dust in a folder. largely. This is already mandatory for most businesses, but from April 2024 all small businesses with income over £10,000 and below the £85,000 VAT threshold will be required to do so as part of the digitalization of taxes and expenses (MTD). As such, you are legally required to keep a digital record of your income.
MTD is the government’s attempt to digitize tax processes to make it easier for businesses to track their tax operations and file tax returns more accurately. MTD requires businesses to maintain records in approved accounting software such as his Xero.
Therefore, a good accountant’s advice is to start using recognized accounting software to record your income and expenses as soon as possible to avoid unnecessary stress near deadlines.