How an effective accounting tool helped me grow my business

One of your top priorities as a small business owner is keeping a close eye on cash inflows and outflows, which is why it is critical to have an effective accounting tool. Running a small business comes with its own set of financial challenges, and accounting is main among them.

You might have the best business idea in the world, but sorting out finances, opening a current account, choosing effective accounting tool, and running payroll seamlessly are few of the many business finance tasks that will eat into your time as a business owner.

The good thing is that there is a host of fintech out there that specialize in varied financial services. and in this blog, I’m going to talk about a few of the tools that I have loved using and would personally recommend to all small businesses out there.

Best accounting tool for small businesses

Here are the best accounting tools that you can use to build a robust financial setup and achieve everything you want, whether it is managing cash flows, bookkeeping, invoicing, or automated payment reconciliation.

The right business account — A dream come true!

A business account plays an integral role in building and sustaining your business. It makes managing the company spend exponentially easier and speeds up tax processes. Most of the traditional bank accounts aren’t suitable for all business purposes.

An account with the Open, Asia’s first neobank for SMEs is a great option you can use here as it is tailor-made for small businesses. With their powerful business account, you can automate accounting, create GST compliant invoices, and stay on top of your receivables and payables.

Further, their bookkeeping reports and easy payment reconciliation processes take the pain out of the overall accounting process.

They offer an Open account — that integrates banking and accounting. Virtual accounts are non-physical accounts that can be used to receive payments on behalf of one’s physical account. In other words — as you do banking or make payouts or receive payments from customers your accounting is automated at the backend, thus saving you a ton of time. Here are a few more benefits of the Open business account which made my business life much easier:

• Everything on a single platform: With Open’s virtual business account, you get the advantage of enjoying a host of integrated tools — right from invoicing and automated accounting to expense management and bulk payouts, all on a single platform. This forms a connected system that is integrated into one account and saves a ton of time and money.
• Easy and quick sign up: The best part of banking with Open is that you can sign up for an account in just 5 minutes and get the virtual business account activated in less than 48 hours. Just WOW!
• Expense management cards: The expense management cards have made it easy for me to reimburse and claim my travel & other expenses.
• Bulk Payouts: I’m a big fan of Open’s bulk payouts feature. It helps me make vendor payouts or salary payments in a bulk transfer, on-the-go.

Now keeping an accurate track of incoming and outgoing money often gets tricky. Although there are multiple options available, finding features that are in line with your business budget, price range, and users can be challenging. Alongside Open you can check out Xero too.

Xero

It is another popular option in the accounting tools category. With a robust mobile app, it allows you to sort through invoices, expenses, and reconciliations without much hassle. It also offers the freedom to spend while keeping track of what you are spending, categorizing the transactions, and giving daily updates on credit card and bank accounts via the Xero dashboard. But Xero’s Standard plan is close to 27k INR, when compared to Open it is 4 times higher than it. I had used it once but dropped, as the prices were very high.

One other option that you could consider is Quickbooks.

Quickbooks

Quickbooks(QB) is an accounting tool developed by Intuit. They too provide accounting solutions for small businesses. Quickbooks help you with tracking income & expenses, sending custom invoices, sorting receipts, and also to connect multiple bank accounts. Although they seem to be widely used, here again, the price point is slightly higher than Open (25% higher than that of Open for QB’s Standard plan). The returns on the investment, when compared with Open, is less.

Yes! Having an effective accounting tool is critical

Having a strong accounting tool is imperative for the success of any small business. One of the great factors that contribute to success in business is the accurate utilization of capital, identifying and minimizing expenses by understanding the cash positions, and channelizing the funds in the productive direction.

It allows you to eliminate bills from your accounting process and focus on the core business to help the company save time and money.

Neobanks like Open offer excellent ‘cost-effective’ solutions that automate accounting for you. And it doesn’t end there — they help make banking simple, convenient, and meaningful by providing solutions that regular banks usually don’t.

Now go choose wisely from the above-mentioned set of tools.