Automating Your Accounting with QuickBooks: A Solopreneur's Guide

As solopreneurs and small business owners, our greatest skill is our juggling ability – jumping from client meetings to scheduling social media posts to managing projects. Needless to say, it can be overwhelming to keep up with it all!

One area that often falls by the wayside is accounting. Which we can get away with until tax time rolls around… and then we may find ourselves in a little hot water 😦

That’s why I’m a big fan of foolproofing these financial processes so that we’re all set when tax season ticks over ✔️ By automating your accounting with QuickBooks, you can save (a lot of) time and headaches!

Accounting software 101

So, what exactly is accounting software and what can it do?

In a nutshell, accounting software helps business owners keep track of their money. It can help with things like managing cash flow, sending invoices, keeping track of revenue and expenses, and creating financial reports. It's like having a digital bookkeeper to help you keep on top of your business finances.

Five cores functionalities include:

• revenue reporting

• expense tracking

• filing taxes

• paying salaries and super

• financial forecasting

Simply put, it is your bookkeeper, accountant and tax advisor all in one 😎

What is QuickBooks?

QuickBooks is an online accounting software developed by Intuit. It is designed to help small and medium-sized businesses manage their finances, including tracking income and expenses, invoicing customers, paying bills, generating financial reports, and managing inventory.

QuickBooks covers a range of industries and is perfect for managing the finances of professional services such as coaching, consulting and creative services. There are both desktop and online versions, and it works as a subscription (monthly or yearly) that offers various features and integrations to streamline accounting processes and improve business efficiency when it comes to financial management.

How can it benefit you & your business?

By automating your accounting, you’re well on your way to foolproofing your financial management processes aka eliminating human error and the fallout from forgetfulness, as well as saving so much of our [sacred] time as busy, multi-tasking solopreneurs!

Specifically, these are some key ways that using QuickBooks can help manage your business finances at different stages of your business-building journey:

Early-stage use cases:

(years 1-2 of business)

1. Expense tracking & receipt scanning

2. Bank feeds & real-time transactions

3. Dashboard for cashflow visibility

4. Estimating tax bill

Budding business use cases:

(2-3 yrs in business)

1. Paying salaries & super/401k

2. Profit & loss statements, pulling reports

3. Filing taxes & activity statements (BAS)

4. Financial analysis & cash flow forecasting

Fave features

These are my fave QuickBooks features and benefits for small business owners:

• Multi-currency payments (a rare find & necessary for us with international businesses)

• Bank feeds (connect your bank account & sync your expenses and revenue transactions straight into your QB accounting software)

• Automated tax reporting (eg. BAS submission)

• Dashboard customisation (choose what charts you want to see at a birds-eye level)

• Free 1:1 virtual onboarding session with the QuickBooks team & fantastic learning library

QuickBooks vs other accounting software

Of course, there are several other options out there that can also help you with financial management (eg. MYOB, Xero, Wave) but here are a few solid reasons why I recommend QuickBooks over other accounting software:

• Simplicity & ease of use - it’s built for small business owners, not accountants

• Ticks the boxes - gives you powerful small biz software without overcomplicating it

• Affordability - tiered pricing with scalable, solopreneur-friendly price points

Getting started

1. Firstly, note down what you need to accomplish with your accounting software

2. Start your free trial, start setting up your account & get your urgent affairs in order

3. Dive into the learning library & book an onboarding session

4. Connect your bank feeds, bake in your processes & customise your dashboard

5. Automate your accounting with advanced features, workflows & reporting

Pro tip: Don’t skip the onboarding session - it’s uber helpful & will give you a good kickstart in the right direction👌🏼