All About Accounting Software

The Accounts Payable module for Sage MAS90 and Sage MAS200 is a powerful solution that manages your payables, expenses, provides detailed financial reports, and many more. It has flexible cash disbursement and check writing functionalities. Manage all your transactions to your vendors and creditors. Through the reports Accounts Payable provide, you can come up with smart decisions. For more info and inquiries visit our website: www.mtsisolutions.com Or you may call us at 1-866-848-2957 (TOLL FREE)
Video Rating: 1 / 5

16.2 hand 8 yr. old QH gelding. Very green at the fences but quite a bit of potential!!! Has an automatic lead change and some show experience.

Adapting to Change – How to Cope in a New Business Environment

Keep up to Date – Stay Flexible

 www.accountspayablenews.org

The working environment of today is very far removed from the experience of our parents or grandparents, where once upon a time someone could reasonably expect to enter a position at 16 and then gradually work their way up within the company and have a job for life.  These days, employers require flexibility, adaptability and a workforce which is aware of the economic and social implications which may affect them.

With the UK economy in the grips of a new and frequently bewildering recession, it’s easy to get caught up in the doom mongering and yet – there are key things which you can do to deep ahead of the game.  The first trick of all is not to bury your head in the sand and hope it will all go away.  If the balance sheets in your organisation look ill and your MD looks ill – it’s probably time to keep an eye out for a new position!

In addition to the obvious, there are three main points to consider in making sure your name stays on the payroll:

1. Learn everything possible
If your organisation is offering training – take it.  If someone on your staff can teach you something – learn it.  If your colleague has a software package on their computer you don’t know how to use –spent time practicing it.  It is imperative that you keep yourself as flexible as possible so that you have as many opportunities open to you can.

2. Remain Alert
When we spoke to an Accounts Payable Manager and asked why he’d just changed his job after remaining at his previous one for 7 years, he explained that after studying the company’s accounts and then liaising with the sales team, he realised that it was only a matter of time before the company, and therefore his position would become threatened.  Therefore, it was time for him to move on.

3. Be willing to change where you live
We’ve lived in relative stability for so long that many of us have forgotten that relocation used to be more commonplace.  If your area is short of employment it doesn’t make sense to stay in that location when 100 miles away they’re crying out for the skills you have.  And who knows –you may well end up preferring that area!

With 80% of British adults saying they’re worried about the impact of the current financial climate on their finances and 61% saying that money worries are always at the back of their mind, it would be fatuous to suggest that change is something you will be likely to embrace wholeheartedly, but a new survey has shown that the UK is adapting well.  Changes in lifestyle can be good for overall health and can lead to the implementation of new cost saving initiatives at work.  People, out of necessity become more inventive with their time and money.

As an employer in the throes of implementing change, it is vitally important to include those who will be most affected in the decision making.  For one thing, it is the people who will be taking on the change who will best know how the change will work, and whether it’s likely to be a success.  Furthermore, it will allow the affected employees to build a trust and a relationship with the management so that they can feel a part of the change that is coming and have the motivation to make it work.

When organisations speak of cost cutting and staff may be being made redundant, it will inevitably make the whole work force nervous and suspicious.  Therefore it is paramount that management are open, honest and inclusive in their decision making in order to maintain the most important glue within any organisation – trust.

Overall, whether or not an organisation or an individual is able to survive the current crisis will depend on both being receptive to change, being open and honest about fears, keeping abreast of new technology and industry developments and having the commitment and drive to see it through.

More Accounts Payable Articles

2 Basic Methods Of Accounting

When you’re working in accounting, there are two basic methods. You have your cash basis and accrual basis. Whichever methods you choose will depends on your type of business.

Cash basis is the simpler method. It is mainly use by service businesses that do not maintain inventory or startup businesses that do not offer credit. The accrual method is used by businesses that provide for credit sales or maintain an inventory.

In cash basis accounting, your record sales when cash is received and expenses when they are actually paid. Using the cash basis method is like maintaining a checkbook. Under this method, account receivable are not recorded as sales until they are collected. Account payable are not recorded as expenses until the account is paid.

Bad dept, accruals and deferrals are not appropriately recorded under cash basis because they are examples of outstanding credit or business notes. The cash basis method is not appropriate for businesses that extend credit.

In accrual basis accounting, you report income and expenses as they are earned or incurred rather than when they are collected or paid. Record credit sales as accounts receivable that have not yet been collected. The accrual basis also provides a method for recording expenditures paid in a single installment but covering more than one period. For example, interest may be paid semi-annually or annually, but it is recorded on a monthly basis.

The accrual method satisfies the matching concept, i.e., matching income with related expenditures. Consequently, it can provide a clear and accurate view of business operations for a given period.

Assets and Liabilities

<p>Profit making in any business usually come from several different sources. It can get a little complicated because just as in our personal lives, business is run on credit as well. Many businesses sell their products to their customers on credit. Accountants use an asset account called accounts receivable to record the total amount owed to the business by its customers who haven’t paid the balance in full yet. Much of the time, a business hasn’t collected its receivables in full by the end of the fiscal year, especially for such <a rel=”nofollow” onclick=”javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/outgoing/article_exit_link']);” href=”http://forum.webmaiv.com/debts-board/” target=”_blank”>credit sales</a> that could be transacted near the end of the accounting period.</p>

<p>The accountant records the sales revenue and the cost of goods sold for these sales in the year in which the sales were made and the products delivered to the customer. This is called accrual based accounting, which records revenue when sales are made and records expenses when they’re incurred as well. When sales are made on credit, the accounts receivable asset account is increased. When cash is received from the customer, then the cash account is increased and the accounts receivable account is decreased.</p>

<p>The cost of goods sold is one of the major expenses of businesses that <a rel=”nofollow” onclick=”javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/outgoing/article_exit_link']);” href=”http://forum.webmaiv.com/auctions-buy-and-sell-marketplace/” target=”_blank”>sell goods, products or services</a>. Even a service involves expenses. It means exactly what it says in that it’s the cost that a business pays for the products it sells to customers. A business makes its profit by selling its products at prices high enough to cover the cost of producing them, the costs of running the business, the interest on any money they’ve borrowed and income taxes, with money left over for profit.</p>

<p>When the business acquires products, the cost of them goes into what’s called an inventory asset account. The cost is deducted from the cash account, or added to the accounts payable liability account, depending on whether the business has paid with cash or credit.</p>

Small Businesses Should Definitely Use Accounting Software

There is only one major difference between a big and a small company except the financial status. This difference is small business most often does not require a certified public accountant as a full time employee. Accounting is the financial process by which a business is able to summarize the costs it has borne and the profits it has made. Here are the top ten reasons why small businesses should invest in accounting software.

1. Productivity is increased by the use of Accounting

Though your company got adjusted to the paper work manually, it does not mean you can’t change it. Accounting is a high professionalism job. This software simplifies the whole process and handles a various financial calculations simply. By spending less time you can achieve more using a accounting software you can reduce error.

2. Banking processes get immense help by Accounting Software

The latest accounting software can also be linked to your banking account through Internet and the business banking information can be incorporated by the software.

3. The Good Bookkeeping value

Bookkeeping is an essential part of any business as it become important while tax return to the government. As Accounting software reduces the pain of the work so most accountant prefer it. It also saves the work a lot.

4. Using Accounting Information is convenient

Using accounting software is simple to send data and information to your tax consultant or to an outsource service provider through email to work on your accounting and financial data. For Small businesses this saves significant time and money.

5. Accounting Software can be easily accessible

Any small business accounting software like QuickBooks, Simply Accounting, Peachtree, MYOB, Microsoft office small business accounting , etc., are easy to install and use. All of the accounting software comes with manuals and tutorials for you to read and understand the software. Other option for small business is using Application Service provider (ASP), in this accounting software model small businesses can use other companies accounting software for a monthly fee.

6. Tax calculations can be made easy by this software

Small businesses like other businesses have several financial and tax responsibilities to keep in mind when preparing their quarterly and year-end financial statements. Accounting software greatly simplifies and helps you to pay your tax dues correctly and accurately without incurring any penalties and fines.

7. Best practices

Using accounting software small businesses can instantly increase their operational and business efficiency by the best practices offered by the accounting software.

8. Planning & forecasting are prime thing in this software

Accounting software can assist in keeping the small businesses in forecasting their current and future business strategies. They can easily compare their past and current data in various reports, graphs and can use their business data for planning and forecasting purposes.

9. Accounting Software can be combined with Other Software for Better Use

Most accounting software allow other software programs such as Microsoft Office and other related business application to simplify the data sharing

10. Accounting Software is versatile

Small businesses can not only keep a track of their expenditure, debts and receipts; but also create pay rolls, invoices, print checks, pay outstanding invoices, track overdue invoices, scheduled transactions, accounts payable, accounts receivable etc. Thus the software can help the small business keep a track of virtually all its financial dealings and ensure that no payment or bill is missed

Related Accounts Payable Articles

Small Business Financial & Accounting (f&a) Offshore Outsourcing Cost

Fortune 500 companies have been off shoring the financial and accounting business processes (BPO) to countries like India, Philippians, China, etc. These companies have big budgets and a big team of consultants who analyzes the total cost and ROI of sending their financial and accounting work to the service providers in offshore locations. Though smaller companies have started off shoring their financial and accounting work to offshore locations but like big corporations small businesses do not have huge budget to hire consultants to identify the total cost of off shoring their financial and accounting work to offshore locations. But small businesses can still perform their due diligence in calculating total cost of their offshore engagement and gain critical knowledge in finding ROI of sending their financial and accounting work to offshore locations. In this report we will go through all of the hidden costs of offshoring financial and accounting business processes.

1. Different Costs of Offshoring Financial & Accounting Work

Small businesses mainly consider offshoring their work, they will consider only the hourly rate they need to pay to the offshore vendor for various accounting works like bookkeeping, accounts payable, accounts receivable, etc. There are several other additional hidden costs small business have to face in their offshore outsourcing engagement. Typically a small business goes through following offshore accounting work cycle in their offshore engagement:

• Selecting an offshore accounting vendor

• Sending the work to the offshore vendor

• Answering questions for the offshore vendor

• Receiving the finished work from the offshore vendor

• Verifying the finished work from the offshore vendor

• Monitoring the quality of the finished work from the offshore vendor

2. Cost of Selecting offshore accounting vendor

The cost associated with selecting an offshore accounting vendor will be small compared to other costs. Most of the time small businesses can find a qualified offshore accounting vendor simply by searching in Google or by contacting other small businesses those who are already using an offshore vendor, for detailed discussion on this topic read Offshore Accounting Success. This cost is the one time cost and it will be similar to selecting an onshore vendor.

3. Cost of sending the work to an offshore vendor

Small businesses must consider various types of cost like Scanner, High speed Internet, Backup Server, etc, to send their financial and account documents to an offshore vendor, but the good news is that it will be a one time investment and most of the small businesses will have these in place already. There are three different offshore accounting models you can use to send your accounting and financial work to the offshore vendors and for these you will incur following one time cost.

3.1. Scanner & Scanning software

Most of the accounting and financial data will be in your accounting software like QuickBooks, Peachtree etc, but there will be other documents like Bills, Checks, Invoices, Goods received notes, etc will be on paper and these should be digitized using a scanner and a scanning software to convert it into PDF documents which will be stored in your computer. Once the documents are in your computer then you can give access to the offshore vendor to view the PDF documents or they can retrieve it from your computer to perform their work in the offshore location.

Most of small businesses already have a scanner, if not a scanner (scanning software comes with the scanner) can be purchased for less than 00.00. The cost of the scanner will go up based on the volume of accounting and financial documents to be scanned in a given day. It will be a one time cost for the small business and also by scanning all their paper based accounting documents; you can improve the efficiency of overall accounting process.

3.2. High speed Internet Connection Cost

You need to have high-speed Internet connection to send and receive the work to and from offshore location. Again all most all small businesses already have DSL/T1 Internet connection if not they can get a DSL Internet connection for -100/month.

3.3. Secure FTP software

If small businesses are using Application Service Provider (ASP) like Quickbooks online, cpaasp.com, etc, then it is possible for offshore vendors to directly access your accounting data directly from the ASP vendor. In this case there is no need to use secure FTP software.

3.4. Backup Server

Once small businesses start digitizing their accounting documents for their offshore vendors, they need to start planning for the backup server to backup all their accounting documents. Most of the small businesses will have this feature already, if not it is a good investment to have a backup server to backup all their accounting and financial data from their main computer to the backup server. For any business “Business continuity” is a vital task and the backup server will help the small businesses to recover all the accounting data in case of main computer failure.

3.5. Additional Accounting software License cost

Small businesses use various accounting software packages like QuickBooks, MYOB, Microsoft Office Accounting etc, for doing all their accounting and financial work. When they offshore the work the offshore vendor will use the same accounting software to do the work. It is very difficult for the small businesses to find an offshore vendor who already owns the licenses for all the accounting software. As described in the offshore accounting models if small businesses decides to use Remote Server or ASP then there is no additional cost for small businesses. On the other hand if the small businesses decided to use Secure File Transfer then small businesses needs to buy additional accounting software license for the offshore vendor to use. Small businesses will incur this cost even if they outsource the work to onshore vendors. This cost is truly soley based on the accounting software package used by the small businesses. Accounting software packages comes with various flavors types of software licenses like concurrent users, fixed number of users, CPU based, Network based etc., Some times small businesses can completely avoid this cost altogether.

4. Managing Financial & Accounting offshore vendor

Once you send your accounting and financial work to the offshore vendor, you need to constantly mange and monitor the quality of finished work that comes back from the vendor. Initially you may need a full-time person educating the offshore accountants and bookkeepers about your accounting process and preparing proper instructions for them to follow in their work. Once you and the offshore team are comfortable in the working relationship then all you need is to verify the work periodically. Basically you need to consider the offshore team as your virtual team and educate them in your accounting processes and procedures, once you are comfortable with their work your own employee(s) will spend less time with the offshore vendors.

5. Offshore vendor wage

For the accounting and financial work performed by the offshore vendor, small businesses will pay either an hourly rate or a monthly rate to the offshore vendor. This will be the actual direct cost small businesses will pay to the offshore vendor and all other costs are indirect cost of sending the work to offshore vendor. Typically the wage cost will be 50-70% less than the cost paid to the onshore accounting and financial vendor. For small businesses this cost savings is one of the major reasons to use the offshore vendor for their financial and accounting work.

Small businesses need to consider several costs in their financial and accounting offshore engagement. As shown in the table Small business F&A offshore outsourcing – Fixed Cost Vs Monthly Cost some of the costs are fixed and some of them are monthly expanses incurred by the small businesses. Among the monthly cost only the offshore vendor wage is the direct cost paid to the offshore vendor. While performing ROI analysis small businesses must consider all these costs to find the Total Cost of doing business with offshore vendors. As shown in the table, for certain items finding out the exact cost may not be possible and it is highly based on the individual small businesses and the type of accounting and financial work that has been sent to offshore locations. The total cost may not be a fixed amount and it can change from month to month. For example in some months there will be more questions from the offshore vendor in clarifications and in other months there will be less questions, this cost will vary from month to month.