Half-year’s resolution: get finances under control

columnar pad bookkeeping. Photo by Becky McCray.

Still writing out financial records by hand? Time to move to a modern system. Photo by Becky McCray.

Take this simple quiz.

When I think of last year’s tax return time, I’d say it was:

A breeze. I just printed out one or two reports and answered a few questions from my tax preparer.
A bit of a mess. I had to do some work to catch up and then answer a lot of questions.
A nightmare. I worked like a dog to get things sorted before I could even think about filing, months late.

If you’re in category 1, you win. You can stop reading here. Have a great day!

If you’re in category 2, now’s the time to make sure you’re up to date through July 1. Schedule the time one day a week to catch up. Invest in a consultation with a pro to see how you can better keep up during the year. Look into delegating part of the work to a pro who will handle it for you and keep you always up to date.

If you’re in category 3, let’s fix it now. Here’s the plan:

Go sign up for WaveApps.com. That’s my personal choice especially for Category 3 people who don’t want a nightmare again next year. There’s no monthly fee for accounting and invoicing. I use Wave myself, and I recommend them. I don’t get any payment for saying so.

Wave will connect with your bank accounts and credit cards to automatically bring in your transactions. If your bank doesn’t play nice (like my rural banks), then you can export your transactions and quickly import them into Wave. Then rather than typing out transactions by hand, you just click and sort your transactions into proper categories.

Wave has pros to help you. When you’re logged into your account, look for “Pro Services” on the left hand sidebar. Pay the money for help from a pro and get organized and caught up. Delegate as much as possible to a pro so that you don’t get weighed down with it during the rest of the year. It’s worth it to keep next tax time from being yet another nightmare.

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About Becky McCray

Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.