The temperature is rising and it’s crucial for business owners to stay cool during the summer heat. Continued bookkeeping practices are essential for maintaining your records, increasing your revenue, and maintaining peace of mind. To that end, we will give you these useful 6 tips for business bookkeeping in the summer.
1. Use the Downtime Effectively
Many businesses experience a lull during the summer season. Many of their customers and clients go on vacation and may not need your products of services during this time. As a result, you can use this valuable opportunity to review your current and former books. You may do this yourself or with the help of your trusted bookkeeper. Look for opportunities in:
- Times of the year when revenue increased or decreased.
- Times of the year when expenses increased or decreased.
- Perform an audit to discover any and all discrepancies in your books.
- Perform a bank reconciliation.
- Create a new budget for everything from office space to the coffee budget.
- Times of the year when revenue increased or decreased.
- Organize receipts for tax time.
2. Perform an Office Inventory
You may have tons of office equipment and supplies lying around that you will never use. Take what is unused and put it for sale. You can use sites like NextDoor, the Facebook Marketplace, and many others to turn that trash into cash. Best of all, back to school is starting soon and you may find many parents looking to buy what you are selling.
3. Shop Around
Now that you have some time, you may shop around. A few hours spent researching certain items can save you hundreds to thousands of dollars in saved expenses. Look for savings on items such as:
- Refinancing your mortgage.
- Looking for new leasing opportunities, especially if you plan to upsize or downsize.
- Shop around for new small business insurance for everything from your property to your vehicles.
- Research new equipment for your business including both new and used items.
- Restock on supplies that happen to be on sale this time of year, including “end of fiscal” year sales.
- Shop around for new power plans. For example, we will Choose Texas Power to help you find the best rates in our state.
4. Invest in Sweat Equity
Does your business need a touch up? Even workers-only businesses can benefit from small touch-ups here and there. This can include everything from a coat of paint to replacing all the spent light bulbs to decluttering the space. You can also look up cool project such as this list from Make Use Of.
5. Audit Your Marketing
Take this chance to look over your previous marketing plans. Which were successful and which were not? We also recommend having a website audit performed to ensure your website is displaying, functioning, and converting the way it was intended to. If you’re shopping around for a website audit provider, we recommend MPP Freelance, as they do a great job on our site.
6. Upgrade Your Business Bookkeeping
Unfortunately, many tasks in the bookkeeping world have advanced in technology, as have many. Now is a good time to research your bookkeeping tools to see if a new and improved one can save you time and money compared to your current tool or tools. Best of all, many bookkeeping tools allow you a free trial so you may do a test drive of sorts.
We also recommend using this time to shop for a bookkeeper if you are in the market for one. We can vouch that we also see a slump during the summer and are happy to meet with potential clients to see if we are a good fit.
Business Bookkeeping in the Summer for Houston
Do you want to use your summer down time to find a bookkeeper? Feel free to contact us at B&J Bookkeeping & Taxes to set up a meeting. We will help you see how much time and money we can save your business year round.
