Five apps that put your business at your fingertips

The accounting industry has benefited so much from the technology boom.

Accounting and running a small business nowadays have improved exponentially. It wasn’t long ago that some colleges and university were talking about “general ledgers” and “books”.

Basically, accounting hadn’t changed in a long time.

Now, I am pleasantly surprised when I see new apps emerging that are changing accounting and making it so much more efficient and effective to run a business.

Business on your fingertips – literally

The number one app spot belongs to QuickBooks Online.

QuickBooks Online (QBO)

This app will enable 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 help you managing your business more efficient and effective.

This QBO app connects to your Corp bank account 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 must 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 report feature 10 years ago.

Benefits

1. Instant backup
2. Access to data from anywhere any time
3. Instant score card and reports
4. Collaborate with partners
5. Improve cashflow
6. Receipt management
7. Up-to-date software

Number 2 app, Dext

This app saves a ton of time and indirectly makes you the best record keeper.

This app puts bookkeeping on steroids.

As you take pictures of your receipts or email them to your unique Dext 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 Dext by having his kid scanning them in a few minutes. This saved him hours of time.

Our staff configured his Dext account and in a matter of minutes all the receipts were uploaded (published) in to QBO, saving even more time and money. Better yet, Dext 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

1. Save time
2. Improve accuracy of uploading receipts
3. Audit trail
4. Connects with QBO
5. Record keeping
6. Cloud storage

Number 3 app 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

1. Secure file sharing
2. Cloud storage
3. Instant document signature
4. Back up
5. Secure file transfer

Number 4 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

1. Better communication with team
2. Communication trail
3. Communication per channel/clients
4. Sharing documents

Number 5 app is T-Sheets, now QB Time

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

1. Keep track of employee hours
2. Keep track of hours per projects
3. Keep track of employee time and location
4. More effective way of adding employee hours
5. More effective way of scheduling