Let’s be honest, if you’re a sole trader or small private landlord, you probably don’t love bookkeeping. It’s something you have to do, rather than something you want to do or enjoy doing.
Insult can be added to injury if you’re so mad busy during the day that you have to update your financial records after hours or worse still – at weekends – when you’d much rather be doing anything else.
But, fail to update your financial records and it can soon damage your business. You can lose track of your income or expenses and the whole thing can turn into a giant, confusing mess. That’s when it can take you even longer to sort out your books, with even more of your precious, supposedly free time gone. Hardly ideal.
Win back your weekends
The first step in preventing such a nightmarish scenario is to choose the right accounting software, which makes bookkeeping far quicker and easier. That’s where Coconut comes into its own. It’s really simple to use, which also means you can get more done in less time.
Lots of time is also saved by automated data entry, which is where your Coconut accounting software imports income and expense transactions directly from your bank account. Coconut can be connected to as many of your accounts as you like. Sole traders can connect their personal bank or current accounts to Coconut and separate their business and personal transactions.
Easy-peasy. No need to waste hours of your weekend manually typing in your income and expenses from your latest monthly statement. This not only saves you lots of time, but it can also prevent basic errors and missed entries. Coconut can also help to ensure that you remember to claim for all of your tax expenses, which means you only pay the tax that you owe.
Time-saving expense management
Coconut can also automatically categorise your expenses, by recognising different types of regular transactions, assigning them to the correct expense category. This not only makes it easier to assess and limit your spending, but it also saves you lots of time when you need to complete and file your tax return. This is where Coconut can also save you lots of time if you’re having to complete your tax return at the weekend.
And having more accurate and up-to-date figures enables you to make better informed business decisions based on real-time figures, which is another key benefit of using Coconut.
You must of course keep proof of purchase for the things you buy for your business, if you claim them as a tax expense. HMRC can request it. Coconut can account for and store scans of sales receipts you capture with your phone. This, too, can mean you don’t have to sit there at the weekend wading through unruly piles of expense receipts. You can take care of them immediately after you’ve bought something for your business.
Coconut accounting software gives you access to your important numbers more or less wherever you are, so you can track your income and expenses in real time. And it comes with invoicing capability, so once again, you don’t have to sit at home at night or during the weekend creating and sending invoices to your customers. With Coconut, you can create and send invoices very quickly via the app, wherever you are. And you can track payments and chase up late-payers, to help keep your cash flow healthy.
You work too hard all week to have your Saturdays or Sundays taken up by bookkeeping. Why not use Coconut and reclaim your weekends and put your time to far better use? Start your free 30-day trial today and find out why so many sole traders and landlords love Coconut.
