Accounting & Financial Archives

10 Essential Accounting & Bookkeeping Tools to Set Your Clients up for Success

The best bookkeeping, organizational, and financial tools for your small business clients’ needs and budgets.

When you introduce clients to time-saving tools and applications that make their workload more manageable, it’s a win-win. They appreciate vetted recommendations from a trusted adviser, and you strengthen your role as an essential partner for your clients by offering advisory services.

Plus, when all (or even some) of your clients use the same tools, it’s easier to streamline your own processes and scale your business.

Important Tips

Many accountants and bookkeepers try to be all things to all people, adapting to whichever tools and apps their clients use. This may be easier in the short term, but it’s inefficient for you and your clients in the long run.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of apps in the cloud accounting/small business ecosystem, and you can’t be an expert on all of them.
Convincing your clients to switch to an all-in-one tool (like FreshBooks) may take some effort. But it will simplify your workflow and streamline your technology stack. Your clients benefit, too. They will save time and likely get better services from you, since you’ll be intimately familiar with the tools and systems they’re using.

Ensure that any solution you recommend has the following traits:

Cloud-based. Cloud-based tools make collaboration easy and effective. You and your clients can easily share data and work effectively on projects remotely and in real-time.
Integrates with other systems and tools you already use and like. Siloed applications waste productivity and lack real-time visibility. Before investing or recommending any tool or app, make sure it plays well with others.

As a FreshBooks partner, many of the solutions I recommend are ones that integrate best with FreshBooks. However, there are many other options out there. It’s a good idea to take advantage of free trials to see which ones work well with the tools you already use and love. – Read more

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How cloud-based inventory management could benefit your business

Cloud-based inventory management is the monitoring and maintenance of a business’s inventory levels using online software. Enabling businesses to avoid many of the errors and issues that arise with traditional methods of measuring stock levels, cloud-based inventory management seamlessly keeps track of inventory coming in and going out of your business.

Traditionally, inventory management has been one of the most time-consuming and least popular tasks carried out by eCommerce businesses to keep their business running. It can be painstakingly boring and diverts resources from more important facets of the business, like growing the brand, improving efficiencies and adding new product lines.

By contrast, Cloud-based inventory management performs the same function, but with greater efficiency and effectiveness. As well as giving businesses back their time and resources; cloud-based stock management systems reduce the likelihood of human error.

Why is cloud-based inventory management important?

When it comes to inventory management, it pays to be precise. Stock is the lifeblood of your business so maintaining the right stock levels is crucial to your operations. Making the shift to a cloud-based inventory management system is important for several reasons:

Instant stock level updates

A cloud-based system can accurately inform you how much stock you have on hand. Cloud-based inventory management software can tell you whether you have enough stock for your demand forecast or whether you need to order more. This is an essential metric for customer satisfaction so you can avoid stockouts. – Read more

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How competitive intelligence grows your business

Every niche has competitors. You likely won’t be the sole provider of a service or product in any industry. Competitor analysis and competitive research are an integral part of growing your business. Learning what other brands are up to and what strategies they’re using helps you plan and strategize better. It also gives you a good idea of what works and what doesn’t for your own customers.

The advent of the internet and social media has made competitor analysis more straightforward and comprehensive. Business owners can now conveniently identify their competitors and learn more about their engagement, strategies, and tactics. If you properly conduct competitive analysis, you’ll end up with plenty of quantitative and qualitative data to get a sense of the competitive landscape. Incorporating these insights into your strategies will help you get the best results.

There’s a lot of hype surrounding the benefits of a competitive analysis, but is it really all that? We think so. And after learning more about how it can help your brand in this article, we hope that you will, too.

What is a competitive analysis?

Competitive analysis is the process of identifying your major business competitors and conducting research to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. This analysis usually involves researching their products, services, sales, and marketing strategies. You can use this information to build better business strategies for your own business—and outperform your competitors.

Why is it important to research competitors?

Conducting a competitive analysis will give you a better understanding of how your competitors are strategizing. When you understand how their businesses work, you can identify opportunities to outperform them. A competitive analysis also helps you gather valuable insights about your industry, so you can ensure your business is meeting industry standards.

Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of conducting a competitive analysis.

Increase market share

Competitor analysis helps you keep up with industry trends, which is vital for staying ahead of the curve. It also gives insight into the saturation of competitors in different segments of your target market.

This analysis can help you uncover market segments where your competitors are falling short and where you can step in to serve the target audience better. You can also use this analysis to identify the target audience’s pain points, so you can plan and improve your products accordingly.

Ultimately, a competitive analysis allows you to identify opportunities to increase your market share.

Convert more customers

Competitive analysis can help you identify new customers you can attract by providing better services or incentives. You can learn what the audience in your niche expects from businesses like yours and look for opportunities to convert them to your brand. Using a competitor analysis, you can find out where your competitor’s products haven’t performed well and avoid making the same mistakes yourself.

With this information in mind, you can work on developing improved products and services that will attract and convert customers. Knowing your competitors’ weaknesses will give you a competitive advantage that you can use to expand your customer base. – Read more

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