Being in business for yourself can seem like a roller-coaster ride at times. There are the incredible highs and then there are the incredible lows. Despite this we continue to work in/on our business which can seem to be a bit crazy at times to those not in business themselves. I know that my family and friends have all thought I was a bit looney for being a small business owner but what can I say except that I love what I do.

The key for me has always been flexibility and the willingness to find new solutions. When working from home stopped ‘working’ for me, I moved into an office space. When I had more work than I could handle I found subcontractors and employees. When my IT became painful I researched and found new solutions.

Here at Tilda Virtual Services we’re all about change and we constantly ask ourselves, ‘is this the most efficient way to do this?’ ‘how can I improve this process?’. We look for ways in which to make ourselves more efficient, we keep up to date on the latest toy on the market and we’re not afraid to sit down as a team and say ‘hey, this isn’t working for me/you/the client’ and to me this gives us an advantage over other businesses in the same industry.

So let me leave you with a question. What are you doing that needs changing and adapting? Are you honest with yourself about being flexible? Could your business do with a bit more flexibility?

If you’ve been thinking of changing over to QuickBooks from another package or from the not so trusty spreadsheet, now is the time to do it.

Current QuickBooks Offers

QuickBooks Accounting 2010/11 Full Version

• 13 Months Advantage Cover
• $100 off official Reckon Classroom Training

QuickBooks Plus, Pro or Premier 2010/11 Full Version

• 13 months Advantage cover
• A free copy of QuickBooks Customer Manager V3 (RRP $329)
• $100 off official Reckon Classroom Training

QuickBooks Accounting, Plus, Pro or Premier 2010/11 Upgrade

• End of Financial Year Guide for half price (saving almost $30)
• $100 off official Reckon Classroom Training

QuickBooks 2010/11 new features

As well as helping keep you compliant, QuickBooks 2010/11 includes the following new features:

• The new, powerful Company Snapshot feature in QuickBooks 2010/11 provides a comprehensive view of all your crucial business information, including income and expense trend graphs, bank balances and customer and supplier accounts due, etc. The Company Snapshot helps you make informed decisions, fast.
• Reconcile your bank accounts while your accountant works on your data file, and import all Accountant Copy changes that your accountant sends you. Your accountant’s data and your accounts for end of year tax returns will therefore be identical.
• Quickly and easily clean up data files so you can increase transaction processing speed.
• Payroll Summary Reports are now in a new, elegant and easy to read format.
• Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit compatible, helping you to process even larger files faster.

Contact me today to order your new software!

Cashflow can make or break a business and it’s something we as business owners don’t do very well.

So what is cashflow exactly?

Quite simply, cashflow is the movement of money both in and out of your business over a certain period of time. So if your cash is flowing out of your business and not back in at roughly the same rate, very quickly your business will run out of cash to pay it’s bills and you’ll be out of business.

So how can we manage our cashflow?

One of the first things we do here at Tilda Virtual Services with a new bookkeeping client is to take a look at the Aged Receivables report. We try to determine the accuracy of the report, the total amount outstanding and the periods in which the amounts fall. This report alone will tell us if the business is controlling it’s aged receivables effectively to remain solvent.

To manage your cashflow you will need to create an Aged Receivables Procedure. You need this procedure to make sure the relevant people within your business know when and how to follow up outstanding invoices. You need it to know how you will manage your cashflow.

Think about how you supply your product or service. Is it project based or ongoing? Do you have repeat business or are your clients/customers purchasing only the once? These questions will assist you in deciding on what trading terms suit your business. For example: let’s say you are a website designer who works with clients once only on a project basis. Your trading terms may very well be 50% deposit and 50% on completion. Or let’s say you are a Virtual Assistant who has some project based clients but the rest are ongoing repeat projects. You may decide to invoice once a week/fortnight or monthly depending on when your own bills and liabilities are due and that they are due 7 days from date of invoice. Once you have determined what your trading terms are, you are ready to move onto the next step in creating your AR Procedure.

Now it’s time to to think about how long it is between the supply of product/services to the time you get paid. If you supply a product/service on the 1st the month but invoice monthly on the 31st with trading terms of 30 days from date of invoice, effectively you are waiting 60 days+ to get paid. Does that seem right to you to have to wait that long to get paid? Can you see how if you changed how often you invoice and reduce your trading terms, you’ll get paid quicker?

You also need to think about when you’ll start to follow up overdue invoices. Do you call them on day 8 of your trading terms to find out when you’ll be paid? Do you send a reminder letter? Do you send a statement? Once you have decided on the sequence of events, write it in your Aged Receivables Procedure. Don’t forget to create the templates, phone scripts and record keeping forms to add with the procedure. They are all important elements of your new procedure.

Once you have done all the hard work of figuring out when you’ll invoice, how long until the invoice is due, when you follow up overdue invoices then start to actually do it, you should start to see an immediate difference to your bank balance. The idea here is to make sure your invoices are getting paid regularly and on time to make sure you can pay your own suppliers.

If you need assistance in creating your Aged Receivables Procedure, contact me today. I have templates for sale that you can use and I can coach you through the process. Don’t wait until your suppliers are hounding you for money before you start managing your cashflow. Start today and see the huge difference it makes to your business.

Systems and procedures aren’t something we as business owners think about, particularly in the beginning when it’s just us working in the business. We’re busy getting our logo’s done, domains registered, websites created and finding clients to even think about procedures.

But as a business grows, as the number of clients increase and as we take on team members it soon becomes very clear to the business owner that systemising your business is the key to future growth.

Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a VA who started her business with one client. She would write down her projects and tasks in a notebook and everything was fantastic in VA-Land. The client was happy and the VA was happy. Soon enough the VA became busier and busier. She now had multiple notebooks for all her clients but being such a visual person, found it difficult to remember where she was up to and what she needed to do each day.

The VA started using a whiteboard the size of her office wall to track everything and that worked for a period of time until she signed up her first Associate/subcontractor and became a Multi-VA. Why was the whiteboard no longer working? Her trusty sidekick lived in Kentucky USA while she lived in country NSW.

The VA then hired an employee and more subcontractors. The business grew too quickly and there came a point where the employee quit and the VA was overwhelmed. She didn’t have time to find another employee or subcontractor and felt she had to do the work of two people just to keep the business moving and her clients happy. Needless to say that if the VA had created her procedures and systemised her business, she would have been able to find a new team member quicker than you can say ‘I need help’.

Learn from my mistakes. Take the time TODAY to systemise your business. From recording how to reply to potential client emails to how to answer the phone. Procedures on when to follow up overdue invoices through to how to show your clients you care, systemise everything. Not only will it free up your time it provides a framework in which all your team members or staff know exactly what is expected of them and why. It will reinforce your brand, your professionalism and it will allow you to grow your business consistently knowing that you have the ability to cope.

So to end my story, I recently took two weeks off from my business and left it in the capable hands of my project manager Melinda and the rest of my team. The business continued to work efficiently and my team dealt with everything in my absence including dealing with new clients.

Start writing down the things you do everyday and how you do it. Systemise as you go through your day and before you know it, you’ll have a procedure manual that just needs to be made pretty.

You recently decided to finally hand over your bookkeeping to a professional so you could spend more time on your business. Good for you!

You’ve done the hard work in finding your bookkeeper either through networking or through a referral from a friend. You’ve met with prospective bookkeepers, spoken to them about what they can do for your, how it will be done, what the end result will be and how much it will cost and now comes the hard part… handing over.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “I’ve just got to catch everything up before I hand it over to you”. If I had a dollar for every time I heard that phrase, I could probably semi-retire!

The whole reason why you’ve decided to hand over your bookkeeping is because it’s taking up too much of your time to get it done or because your really really bad at it.

If you attempt to catch up your bookkeeping before you hand it over, odds are that you are creating more work for the bookkeeper which is going to cost you more money.

Typical issues I see with new client bookkeeping:

• Bank account doesn’t reconcile so therefore you ‘fudge’ the bank fees;
• You entered a cheque but can’t find it so you enter it again;
• Your customers have paid you too much so you’ve ‘fudged’ the payment
• Insert your own mistakes here.

If I can educate business owners on one thing it would be to NOT catch up their bookkeeping before handing it over. Doing a little bit of repair work or forensic bookkeeping is ok but if a client’s books are that bad I’ll often say no. I can’t do it for you because it will cost you too much money to fix.

Most business owners don’t realise just how important keeping their bookkeeping up to date and correct actually is. They’re too busy in the day to day aspect of their business that they underestimate the importance of bookkeeping.

So please, on behalf of all the bookkeepers in the world, DON’T catch up your bookkeeping, just hand it over! Your cheque book will thank you!

Tilda Virtual Services is looking for someone to join the team in a part time Office Assistant role. If you have administrative experience, reception skills, some bookkeeping skills and don’t mind part time work, then send an email via the contact us page as we’d like to hear from you.

Please note that this position is not on a subcontract basis and you will be required to work from our office in Wheelers Hill – this is not negotiable!

In case you haven’t heard by now, Tilda Virtual Services has just opened its “actual” doors at Suite 1.13, 202 Jells Road in Wheelers Hill. These are real actual doors to our office which is open to the public where we provide binding, copying and faxing services in addition to our regular bookkeeping and virtual assistance services. And what would be the sense of a bunch of virtual assistants working out of an office suite if we didn’t offer virtual office space to home-based business owners?

Not many VAs actually take the leap and secure an office space outside the home. Truth be told, there’s not really much need of doing so. However, I felt strongly that I could further serve local home-based business owners by offering reception services and mail redirection; services much easier to provide from an “actual” office. Lincoln (code monkey) also wouldn’t have liked me renting meeting rooms before I secured the new office space outside of our home. “I don’t care if there’s a game on, Mr. Smith needs the family room. He booked it last week!”

But I digress. Was it easy for me to take such a big step into the unknown that is 202 Jells Road? No. Was it scary? Yes. Then again, it wasn’t easy for me to start this business when I was preparing to give birth to my third baby! You see, I don’t want to live my life in fear. I don’t believe it does one bit of good. I prefer to live my life in opportunity.

Fear crushes dreams. It stunts business growth and prevents us from reaching our full potential. It’s a nasty beast, isn’t it?

Being an entrepreneur, the very nature of it, means you’re always faced with another risk or a scary decision to make. But the way I see it, if you never feel that fear and go ahead and do it anyway, you’re never going to grow. You won’t really get anywhere if you just keep going with what feels comfortable.

I’d like to challenge you this month to do something that you fear. Go ahead and experience the fear but do it anyway and see how empowering it is. You will hopefully get used to it. After all, at the end of your days would you rather tell your grandchildren you lived your life in opportunity or in fear?

1. They ask questions
2. They refer back to GST legislation for verification
3. They’re experienced
4. They know double entry accounting and can troubleshoot anything in your software program of choice
5. They ask questions (yes this is a deliberate double up)
6. They’re happy to liaise with your accountant on your behalf
7. They give you all the reports you want and need in a timely fashion
8. They give you regular backups of your datafile and have an OCD approach to backing up their own network/computer
9. They’re a member of a bookkeeper association
10. They’re continually looking to improve their skills and knowledge

Unfortunately, not all business owners will find a great bookkeeper on their first try because not all bookkeepers are great. There are some who are ok, good even, but not great. In any industry you’ll find people marketing themselves when they don’t have the skills to back it up. and bookkeeping is no different. Fortunately for business owners, the new Tax Agent Services Act will help them to weed out the bad from the great.

For more information about the new Tax Agent Services Act, please visit the Tax Practitioners Board.

Melinda, the girls and I are madly getting ready for the Australian VA Conference. As a major sponsor via Tilda Hosting, we are able to do inserts in the goody bags and have an expo table too. We’ve got the DL flyers ready, business cards ready and we haven’t forgotten the chocolate frogs either!!

The conference is only next week but it isn’t too late to register. Please go to the website and register. You won’t regret it!

Don’t worry, we haven’t moved interstate like last time but rather we’ve moved into office space. You can now find us at Suite 113, 202 Jells Road, Wheelers Hill, Vic 3150. Our office hours are now 9am to 5pm.

Our phone number has stayed the same at 03 9013 8389.

Thanks for all your support!!