It is almost impossible to turn on the news today without being bombarded by the reality that the economy is going through the exciting part of the rollercoaster ride — the part where the rollercoaster goes DOWN. Small businesses and self-employed professionals are particularly vulnerable during these tough times because they do not have the financial backbone of larger companies to weather this storm. However, there are several things you can do to as a small business owner to ensure your prosperity during a recession:

• Identify your most profitable clients and service them well.
• Cut costs by keeping track of your expenses by category — so that you can identify any unnecessary expenses and where you are spending the most money.
• Update your financial records frequently and diligently (preferably on a weekly basis); this will help you make important decisions regarding your business quickly and effectively. For example, if you are starting to notice that your expenses are exceeding your income; or if there are outstanding invoices, you will need to act quickly to decrease your expenses and track down the payments on your invoices.

It is a well known fact that many small businesses and self-employed professionals do not have an accounting system to keep track of their income and expenses. While many people have survived in the past by putting their receipts and income records in a “shoebox”, this may be deadly for small business owners during an economic downturn.

Why?

Without getting up to date information on the financial status of your business, you may not even know you are in trouble until it is too late.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help

Accounting may seem like a foreign language to many small business owners. Sometimes it seems easier to avoid dealing with the business finances instead of spending the time learning about bookkeeping. Trust me, we all think we have better things to do, this includes the founders at Clarity Accounting, we get behind on our bookkeeping too! Luckily, we have a super easy online accounting software we can use to catch up on our books when we need to.

We offer comprehensive support for anyone who asks for help — regardless of whether you are a paying client of Clarity Accounting. We usually try to respond to any support inquiries within one business day. No question is a stupid question. While we are not professional accountants, we know a thing or two about bookkeeping (after all, we created an accounting software). However, if you have accounting related questions that are specific to your country / region, you will need to speak to your accountant.
How to ask for help from the staff at Clarity Accounting

Here are a few ways you can request for support from the Clarity Accounting Team:

1. Visit our Accounting Help page to see if there is already a help file available for your question. You can use our “search” function and type in any keywords that are relevant to your questions.
2. Send us a question by email to: support@clarityaccounting.com.
3. Request a phone consultation by submitting an email inquiry so we can find a mutually agreeable time to chat. Please include some questions you would like to address so that we can assign the most appropriate staff member to assist you.
4. You can call us directly during our office hours.

Questions?

If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please do not hesitate to contact us directly.

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Tags: income and expenses, mac business software, online accounting software, small business accounting software

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 at 1:10 am by May Chu and is filed under Business Insights, Small Business Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.