Very few people enjoy working on their business finances. Fortunately, there are quite a few ways your Virtual Assistant can help you get on top of them.
Accounts Payable
Checking invoices include all relevant details (ABN, GST status etc)
There are certain things that need to be on an invoice by law and most larger companies will be on top of that, however smaller businesses often miss things and you have an obligation to withhold GST credits if the invoice isn’t issued correctly. It’s in your best interests to make sure all invoices you pay are issued correctly, and if they’re not, it’s a nice thing to be able to go back to the issuer and let them know what needs to be changed and ask them to re-issue the invoice.
Assign cost codes
Before you enter invoices, you need to assign cost codes to the charges so that you can track your expenses. If you’re a small business or soloist you may only need a couple of codes to categorise your expenses. If you’re a larger business you’ll probably have quite a few. Generally, the cost codes would cover things like Utilities, IT, Staffing costs, Marketing expenses etc. By recording every invoice against a code you’re able to run reports that will show you how much you spend in each area and allow for much better budgeting and financial accountability.
Enter invoices into your accounting system
Once an invoice has been checked and had a cost code assigned, it needs to be entered onto your accounting system for payment. Accuracy is incredibly important as if you make mistakes entering the invoice you can over or under pay the invoice, or at the very least have a hard time balancing the transactions at the end of the month.
Contacting suppliers with queries regarding their invoices
Sometimes you’ll receive an invoice that you want to query. Whether it’s because it’s significantly larger or smaller than expected, or just because you don’t actually know what the invoice is for it’s good to have someone who can chase up the suppliers and find out all the relevant details so you can process the payment as soon as possible.
Electronically filing invoice copies
Everybody needs to keep copies of paid invoices for a certain amount of time and it’s so much better if you can find those invoice copies easily when / if you need to. Some accounting programs will allow you to save an electronic copy with the transaction, which is my preferred way of doing it. Otherwise you could scan the invoice and save it manually, sorted by month, supplier or whatever else makes sense to you.
Accounts Receivable
Creating templates for invoices etc. and uploading them to your accounting program
Branding is important for a business and it should extend to everything a business sends out. A Virtual Assistant can create templates for invoices, statements and credit notes and make sure they all use your logo, colours and fonts and any other information you include on all documents. Once you’ve got the documents looking the way you want, your Virtual Assistant can upload them into your accounting program so that everything produced will have your business branding.
Entering customer details and making sure they’re correctly updating from your CRM
It’s critical that any changes made to client details on your CRM are also made in your invoicing program and vice versa. A Virtual Assistant can go through and manually enter changes in both, or make sure that the two services are synchronising correctly.
Invoicing your clients
Your Virtual Assistant can produce the invoices to your clients to whichever level you feel most comfortable with. They can create and send the invoice, or create the invoice and save it for your later approval. Then once you’ve approved it, they can email it to your client using your accounts department email account.
Reconciling bank accounts on a daily/weekly/monthly basis
Bank statements need to be regularly reconciled so you can keep an accurate track on available funds, and so you can chase any unpaid invoices. Your Virtual Assistant can do through the bank statement and match payments with invoices so you know which accounts have been paid. They can also contact debtors to query payments which are unclear or incorrect.
Chasing outstanding debtors
It’s often easier to get a third party to chase outstanding debtors, firstly because it’s someone new and that often prompts the debtor to respond (and at times, to answer the phone if they’re dodging your clients calls). Secondly, a third party doesn’t have the same level of investment in your business and can remain impartial when a debtor complains about the invoice.
If you’re not convinced, think about the time you spend doing this sort of work at your hourly rate, compared to the time a Virtual Assistant would take at their hourly rate. I’m certain it will work out to be a lot less costly and a lot less stressful getting a Virtual Assistant to help with your finances
