Debitoor blog

The life of a small business owner is busy. It’s as demanding as it is rewarding, and not always in equal measure. You likely often find yourself pulled in many different directions simultaneously.

From keeping documents organised to ensuring your payments are all on track to finding out about the latest regulation changes and following up on late payments from customers...and those are just the tedious administrative tasks.

You need time to actually run your business and do the work. But if you’ve been depending on folders or boxes full of papers, or even in antiquated CD-rom-installed accounting software, it might be time to take back control of your schedule. Accounting & invoicing software can help make that happen.

As a freelancer or entrepreneur, you’ll regularly spend money on your business, and if you manage your business’s bookkeeping and accounting, it’s important to know how to account for the purchases you make – which involves distinguishing between assets and expenses.

In this blog post, we explain how an asset differs from an expense, how to account for assets and expenses, and how to record both in your accounting and invoicing software.

If you run a business, there are many things that are simply unavoidable. But there’s one in particular that inspires many to want to turn tail and run: accounting. Maybe accountants enjoy the tedious number crunching, but for most freelancers and small business owners, it’s not something on which you’d choose to spend your time.

This is when it pays off to find and invest in accounting software. While that may sound intimidating, the accounting programs today are a far cry from the CD download install versions of even a decade ago.

Today the focus is on automation, ease-of-use, and portability - even for those without any experience managing business finances. Online accounting software makes it easy.

From utility bills to marketing costs, travel expenses to employees’ wages, businesses incur a number of different expenses, and it’s important that you sort these costs into different business expense categories.

In this blog post, we look at why it’s important to categorise your business expenses, and how Debitoor can help you keep your expenses organised.

If you work in fitness, it’s likely that you’re not particularly inclined towards sitting in the office. Just an assumption, but when it comes to personal training, the work and passion that you put not only into your own fitness but also into that of your clients means that you are more likely to be found in the gym or outdoors.

Unless you’re employed directly by a gym, you’re self-employed. You’re setting your own hours and rates, and it’s a fantastic feeling to be able to do what you love, when you want, and help people pursue health and see results.

And yet there are some things that come with the territory of being self-employed that will take time away from the parts you love about being a personal trainer. Accounting. Invoicing. Following up on late payments.

More and more businesses are choosing to use their commercial skills to benefit others. The British Government estimates that, as of 2017, there were 471,000 social enterprises in the UK – and this number is likely to have risen significantly in the last few years.

Although their missions and purposes might be quite different, social enterprises are just like regular businesses in many other ways. Not only do they aim to make a profit, but trade is their main source of income. This means that just like other types of businesses, social enterprises will regularly need to send invoices.

Whatever type of organisation you work for, the easiest way to send invoices is to use online invoicing software like Debitoor. Here’s what social enterprises should look for when choosing software to help with their invoicing.

Balancing the books. Does the thought of it make you cringe? Or do you suddenly realise that you really should clean the kitchen today? It’s also been ages since you organised your desk...

While these things are important, managing the bookkeeping for your business is also incredibly important. We know you know that. But it doesn’t make it any easier to sit down and get it done.

If you’ve ever let those expenses pile up day after day, or even week after week, you’re certainly not alone. From our experience, self-employed who record each transaction as it occurs are truly the exception, not the rule. But what if it were easy to become one of them? And to avoid the tedious task of sitting down to spend hours catching up on bookkeeping.

In the 2018-2019 budget, the Australian Government announced an economy-wide cap on payments made with cash, meaning that business cannot make or accept cash payments of more than $10,000.

So how might this new legislation affect small business owners, and what steps should you take to make sure that you don’t break the rules?

It’s a question we hear from time to time in Debitoor support. However, Debitoor does not actually handle any money that is paid between your customers and your business. Debitoor acts as an easy tool for creating and sending invoices in less than a minute as well as for adding expenses from anywhere, but it also allows you to give your customers the option of online payment.

Debitoor offers several options for making it easy for your customers to pay your invoices, but this money will not pass through your Debitoor account at any time.

Running a small business is a rewarding, challenging, and, especially in the early stages, time-consuming experience. When it comes time to file your accounts, you may find that a little more time would be helpful.

It can seem a little daunting to deal with all of the information required for filing accounts, getting organised, working with your accountant, and ensuring this is all done on time.

If you discover that a little extra time could mean the difference between rushed filing and a thorough understanding of your accounts, there is an option that you might consider with Companies House.