Accounting industry has benefited so much from the technology boom. Accounting and running a small business now adays have improved exponentially. It wasn’t long ago that some colleges and university were talking about “general Ledgers” “Books” and so on. Basically, accounting hadn’t changed in a long time.
Now, I am pleasantly surprised when I see new apps are emerging that changing accounting and making it so much more efficient and effective to run a business.
Business on your fingertips – literally
Number one superpower app spot belongs to QuickBooks Online.
QuickBooks Online (QBO)
This app will empower you to run your business even better, save time, your money, and your business. According to Intuit, Over 98% of customers agree that QuickBooks helps them run their business more easily. QBO acts like a hub which other apps can be attached to it and making it and your business so much more powerful.
This app enables you to also connect it to your bank and credit card. Once this is done data will flow through it instantly.
Once this is done, reports can be produced so you can see how your business is doing. Speaking of reports, they can also be customized, you can choose a favorite report, perform analysis and much more. You can make decisions and see trends right away. One of the features that I like is running comparisons either year-by-year or quarter by quarter. I don’t think that you have to be a geek to appreciate this. If you are serious entrepreneur, you will know how valuable this is.
I don’t think even the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Coca Cola or IBM had this instant data 10 years ago.
Benefits
- Instant backup
- Access to data from anywhere any time
- Instant score card and reports
- Collaborate with partners
- Improve cashflow
- Receipt Management
- Up-to-date Software
Number 2 Superpower, Receipt Bank (RB)
This app saves a ton of time and indirectly makes you the best record keeper.
As you take pictures of your receipts or email them to your unique receipt bank email. The built in OCT technology, reads the data such as supplier name, invoice number, invoice data, costs, taxes, methods of payment and submit them if connected to QBO. One of our Numetrica clients submitted over 1,300 receipts to RB by having his kid scanning them in a few minutes. This saved him hours of time. Our staff configured his RB account and in a matter of minutes all of the receipts were uploaded (published) in to QBO, saving even more time and money. Better yet, RB saves the electronic receipts for 10 years. In case CRA is asking for any of those receipts we can identify them again in minutes. This again saves time. Time saved is money earned – tax free.
Benefits to business
- Save time
- Improve accuracy of uploading receipts
- Audit Trail
- Connects with QBO
- Record keeping
- Cloud Storage
Number 3 Superpower is Dropbox
This is one of my favorites, all our client’s data are saved on this app. We can easily go to any client’s folders and find any documents that was previously saved. For instance, one of our clients in Victoria BC was looking for his GST election since CRA was asking for it. Instantly we identified and submit through CRA portal. Not only we saved time, we also saved paper. Speaking of that, since we have used Dropbox, we have not printed any tax return neither for CRA or clients. We sued to go through so many boxes of paper.
They were all produced in PDF format, even authorization slips. Another great feature that I really like is transferring files. For example, your mortgage broker wants a copy of your T1 General or tax return, we just simply click on the file or files and use file transfer. This is super secure, and the transfer will expire in couple of days if not downloaded. I highly recommend this since emailing tax files are not safe and can be hacked.
I still see clients transfer sensitive documents such as tax return through email, if this gets hacked it will be disastrous.
Benefits
- Secure file sharing
- Cloud storage
- Instant document signature
- Back up
- Secure file transfer
Number 4 Superpower app is Slack
Another favourite app that we use everyday. I have nothing against email however, if you have 100s of clients and send numerous emails, good luck finding a specific information in those emails. Through slack, channels are created, this could be clients name and communication about that clients are conducted in that channel. You can easily see what actions needs to be taken, what has been accomplished and so on. It is so great in case an employee has left, the new employee in charge of the file can see the whole documented history.
Benefits
- Better communication with team
- Communication trail
- Communication per channel/clients
- Sharing documents
Number 5 Superpower app is T-Sheets
Employee can be setup on T-Sheets, work on different projects. Superpower software app keeps track of employees hours time even their location through GPS Once you or a manager has approved the hours the data can be sent to QBO for the payroll to be processed. One of the features that you can use is to see how much time was spent on a specific project either by all staff or just one staff.
Benefits
- Keep track of employee hours
- Keep track of hours per projects
- Keep track of employee time and location
- More effective way of adding employee hours
- More effective way of scheduling
Number 6 Superpower app is Fathom
Great reporting app. If you like data and analysis and make decisions based on those which every business owner or CFO should, this is your best tool. The reports are fancy, great looking, in-depth and much more. They even make the accounting firms who use them more impressive and professional.
Benefits
- Track business performance at a glance
- Obtain comprehensive financial intelligence
- Obtain Performance reporting
- Great data analysis
Number 7 Superpower is Hubdoc
Similar to RB it does saves the receipts, reads relevant and important data and publishes them to QBO. What I really like about this app is that once installed and connected to a bank account, it will download bank statements as far as 2016 in a matter of minutes. We setup one of our dentist clients on Hubdoc since he had a hard time and actually no time to go to the bank, order the bank statements and wait for god knows how long to receive the statements. Once we set him up, as he and I were discussing how we can transform his business, Hubdoc Fetched over 300 bank statements.
- Save time
- Improve accuracy of uploading receipts
- Audit Trail
- Connects with QBO
- Record keeping
- Cloud Storage
- Great bank statements Fetch
Whether you need help with year end procedures, your corporate tax return, cloud accounting technology or even cloud accounting for dentists, trust Numetrica City.
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