Online accounting

COVID – 19 has undoubtedly affected just about every single business. Someone more significant, perhaps even liquidating, someone changes not yet felt. U.S. company Digital Commerce 360 conducted a survey in March 2020, according to which up to 47% of retailers expect some decline in sales, which retailers need to prepare for. A number of establishments were left closed and forced to figure out how to deliver their services and goods to customers. In today’s digital age, the internet, e-commerce and the entire online environment is a lifesaver for these entrepreneurs if they can properly develop their potential and seize the opportunity. Since we account for a lot of ecommerce sites, we’ll show you some basic tips for effective and inexpensive online accounting.

Invoices issued

The invoices issued agenda is a prime example of saving and automation in accounting. Forget Excel – which has its advantages, no doubt, but is not really suitable for issuing a large number of invoices. For e-shops, it is desirable to have a connected e-shop with the invoicing application to such an extent that the system handles it from order confirmation to issuing the final invoice with its transfer to the accounting software itself. The current offer of internet applications for issuing invoices is very varied and I will highlight at least the basic three that can save you time and money – superfaktura.sk, ikros.sk, idoklad.sk. How can these invoicing tools save us time and money?

Time – connection with e-shop and automatic invoice issuing after order confirmation, easy duplication of already issued invoices, automatic filling in of the customer from ORSR / Finstat without the need to fill in the company identification data, setting up regular invoices, sending invoices directly from the application, invoice issuing simply from the mobile phone and many other advantages

Finance – Individual web applications support bulk export of issued invoices to various accounting software. For larger data volumes, invoices for a given period can be exported with a few clicks, and re-imported into the accounting software with a few clicks. Less work with manual uploading of documents for the accountant = lower price for accounting. Our motto is: Don’t pay for what can be automatically charged

Tip: Invoice automation is especially suitable for e-shops where several invoices are issued daily.

Banks

The right choice of banking institution should not be underestimated. Not all banks offer electronic communication via xml outputs as part of the basic or business package (some banks charge extra for this service). Convenient transfer of data from the bank to the accounting software (usually via xml feed or linking the bank itself with the accounting software) remains a priority in terms of time and financial savings.

Time – you can set your accountant to have “read access” to your bank account and thus you do not have to worry about sending pdf and xml outputs every month.

Finance – by automatically importing credit and debit operations from the bank, with the correct assignment of variable symbols, we can achieve faster posting of individual movements on the bank account, where we significantly save the time of posting the bank statement compared to manual “uploading” of these operations. Again, the motto “Don’t pay for what can be automatically charged” applies.

Tip: Banks that have no problem with electronic communication and provide it in the basic package are Fio banka, Tatra banka, VÚB banka.

Invoices received

There are various invoice extraction software on the market that attempt to automate the incoming invoice agenda, but the variety of individual invoices makes incorporating extraction more challenging. The automation itself can be set at two levels of saving, namely:

1. I want to pay the accountant less (I do part of the work)
2. I have a number of invoices from one supplier

Case no. 1. – in practice, we encounter a large number of clients who keep an internal list of invoices received – on the basis of which they later make payments. We can set the list to be easily importable into the Received Invoices agenda and thus again save time on the accountant’s side.

Case no. 2. – this type of invoice import can only be implemented for clients who purchase goods/services from a specific supplier (where there are usually more than 15 invoices received on a monthly basis). Of course, the supplier must also be willing to provide a list of these invoices in excel format, which we can modify for possible import into the accounting agenda.

Tip: For more demanding clients, we can also make the accounting software available, where you can easily save individual invoices received directly into the accounting software and also export them in xml format to the bank as a payment order.

Online database of documents

The hurried times, the impact of the coronavirus on meeting opportunities and the convenience of people dealing with everything over the Internet have also affected the accounting industry – in this case, let’s take the word “affected” in a positive sense. If you’ve been bothered by having to take your receipts to your accountant in person every month – there’s already a solution to this problem. External data storage or internal document sharing can save you time while giving you the ability to access invoices and receipts online if desired.

Online accounting

• Most accounting companies use “boxed accounting software” that is installed on a computer (let’s call this process OFFLINE where you need equipment and software to do the accounting)
• On the other hand, with ONLINE accounting, we don’t have to bother with any installation, we just need a device and the internet, and the accounting software is provided as a service of a specific supplier.

What does online accounting combined with automation mean for our accounting team?

1. Communication with the accountant via chat, email, phone, uploading documents via cloud storage or shared folders (without the need to physically upload documents)
2. Online outputs, with the possibility of basic reports from the accounts payable ledger, accounts receivable ledger, interim profit and loss, cash balance, current VAT
3. Automatic linking of the e-shop with the accounting software and their mutual synchronization
4. Automatic invoicing from e-shop with link to accounting software and flow of issued invoices to accounting software
5. Online linking of the bank with the accounting software
6. Payment gateway billing for e-shops based on imports

Summary

Especially with e-commerce, it doesn’t make sense for a business to pay more for accounting than is reasonable. Accounting, at its most basic, is just a necessary evil for many smaller businesses, unless they also want to take advantage of related tax optimisation services or take advantage of some of the government’s measures. So our aim is to simplify accounting as much as possible and only charge where it adds real value to the client. And that can be not only in accounting automation (for some of our larger clients with eshops, we have spent some time implementing automation features into the accounting system), but also, for example, in the following services related to business rescue due to COVID-19:

• Who is entitled to and how is sick leave, holiday pay, unemployment benefit calculated?
• How can this reduce the employer’s costs?
• How to terminate relationships with employees and contractors? Legal and practical pitfalls;
• How can I still reduce my tax liability for 2019?
• How can you reduce the tax-tax burden on employees today without laying them off?
• What about the rent? Left? Termination?
• Government measures and their use – contributions, deferrals, state-assisted financing, …
• How do foreclosures or tax audits work today?
• What are the restrictions on the payment of dividends and other liquidity from the company to the owners?
• How to legally and fiscally separate the healthy and valuable part of the business from the contaminated part?
• On the other hand, with ONLINE accounting, we don’t have to bother with any installation, we just need a device and the internet, and the accounting software is provided as a service of a specific supplier.

If any of this interests you, or if you have any insightful experiences with accounting automation, please let us know.