The other day I was so overwhelmed with the amount of emails and texts I needed to send out. Instead of letting random texts here and there take over my day, I made a list of ALL the emails and texts I needed to get out. They were no longer hanging over my head. That afternoon I sat down and conquered all of them at the same time.
Maybe your bookkeeping has taken an absolute back seat this year, but now it’s really stressing you out.
Don’t panic. What I just described is a simple time management tip that I think is the key to catching up with your bookkeeping: Batch your tasks together. Write down a list of the items you need to tackle and then block out a time to do it. Discipline yourself to tackle one item after another, and you’ll be much less overwhelmed.
Here are some tasks you could batch together. These are all essential tasks to keep your business finances in order:
Connecting or re-connecting your banks in Quickbooks Online.
Collecting bank statements for the year so you can reconcile.
Gathering all of your receipts for the year (use Receipt Bank, Shoeboxed or Hubdoc to make this easy!)
Categorizing your income and expenses.
Making a list of things you bought with personal money instead of through your business bank account to make sure you get the tax deductions.
Requesting W-9’s from contractors. You’ll need these for 1099’s and you’ll be ahead of the game if you do it now.
Troubleshooting those issues in Quickbooks or 17hats or whatever it is that you just can’t figure out
Researching what it would take to delegate this out next year!
Hopefully this helps you get the ball rolling on catching-up and even helps you get ahead this year.
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Tanya is the owner of Tidy Books - a bookkeeping firm that works exclusively with photographers. She “gets” photographers and loves to support them with their finances so they can focus on their strengths and grow their business. She specializes in helping photographers maximize Quickbooks and/or take the bookkeeping weight off of their shoulders.