Keeping track of your business spending can feel like an overwhelming task which often leads to bookkeeping mistakes. If you find yourself making common bookkeeping mistakes, a spend management tool could be just what you need to stay organized and on top of your business spending.
Top Bookkeeping Mistakes to Watch Out For
You run a business to make money, not unintentionally waste it or lose track of it. But all too often common bookkeeping mistakes lead to lost time and revenue that could have been avoided. If you think that expenses are slipping through the cracks, you may be making a simple yet fixable mistake. Here’s what you should be looking for when you feel like bookkeeping mistakes are being made:
1. Improper Record-Keeping
Whether you are new to owning your own small business or a veteran with years of experience, good record-keeping is an essential aspect of successful business management. It helps a business to keep track of its financial transactions, monitor performance, and make informed decisions. Accurate and up-to-date records allow a business to do everything from tracking income and expenses to calculating taxes. In addition, good record–keeping is a key step in establishing creditworthiness, securing loans, and attracting investors.
Despite this, many businesses don’t accurately track expenses that are key to keeping the books in order. Depending on your industry this can include everything from petty cash and employee reimbursement to larger purchases and even payroll. Often, not keeping accurate records simply comes down to being overwhelmed by the number of receipts that need to be tracked and organized.
A key solution to this problem is an spend management tool which can keep track of and organize your business spend without the headache of you or your financial team trying to manually search for each expense and transaction. Bento for Business offers a comprehensive platform that allows you to organize your business spend with customizable business debit cards. Whether you need one card for your business or multiple to spread across different teams or departments, our AI-Powered Receipt Capture and Integrated Dashboard which offers a 360 view of your business spending can keep you and your records on track.
2. Incorrectly Categorizing Expenses
Another key mistake that can hurt a business’s bookkeeping is incorrectly categorizing expenses. If expenses aren’t tracked and categorized correctly it can lead to mismatched budgets which can throw off a company’s budget projections.
Additionally, you want to avoid miscategorizing expenses if possible because it will reduce the accuracy of your financial statements. Depending on the size of your business and the growth you would like to see, this can impact your credibility and growth potential.
While correctly categorizing all your expenses and payments may seem like a daunting task, there are tools available that can organize your finances with little effort on your part. With Bento, our Auto Categorization feature allows you to set your category features to a granular level and then does the rest of the work for you by tracking and categorizing your payments and spending.
3. Not Reviewing Financial Statements
As a business owner or financial leader, it can be easy to get bogged down in the amount of paperwork that needs your attention. This in turn can lead to missing or not reviewing all your financial statements because there is simply too much to review. While it may not seem like a big deal to let a few things slide here and there, inattention can lead to lost revenue and your books can quickly get out of order.
To avoid this, consider using a spend management tool to help you track and organize your expenses so that when the time comes for you to review them, the process is as efficient as possible. With Bento’s 360 view dashboard, you can see how much money you have in your account, how much you have spent, and where your money is going. This makes reviewing your financial statements a breeze so that you can feel confident that you have a full view of your business financially.
How Bento for Business Makes Bookkeeping SIMPLE
Bento for Business is a spend management solution that makes bookkeeping simple and efficient. It automates many of the manual and time-consuming tasks associated with traditional bookkeeping, such as tracking expenses, reconciling accounts, and generating financial reports. Bento also offers integrations with popular tools such as QuickBooks and Xero so you can easily import data to keep everything related to your business spending organized. Our user-friendly interface, customizable categories, and real-time reporting gives business and financial leaders a streamlined way to manage finances and frees up your time and resources to focus on business growth.
Why Bento Is the Best Choice for Your Business
Bento works for small startups and global enterprises, taking the stress out of tracing receipts, creating expense reports, and manually entering data into Excel and QuickBooks. Bento also offers:
- A debit rather than a credit system
- Both plastic and virtual cards
- No hidden charges: only pay for international ATM withdrawals
- Efficient expense approval workflows
- A modern UI that looks great on desktops and smartphones
- Immediate time and cost savings
- Highly secure platform
- Easy setup
- And much more
