Keeping records is what most people, except accountants, don't like to think about, and certainly don't like to do. It should be easier to deal with those invoices, receipts and so on, right? Fortunately, it is also possible, by switching to digital accounting.
For many people, including the author of this article, it is quite a barrier to switch to a digital administration. Still, we absolutely recommend that you do it. It's not complicated and it saves you an incredible amount of time afterwards. We will help you on your way, and we will immediately give you the first tip: switch at the start of a new financial year, which is a lot easier than halfway through the year.
Accounting vs Administration
The terms accounting and administration are often used interchangeably. Not convenient, because they are two completely different things. Administration is keeping your invoices, receipts, in other words, the incoming and outgoing items. Accounting is the correcting of the accounting for the tax authorities, the application of regulations and so on. This article is about digitizing your administration. We are not bookkeepers, so we cannot help you with the substantive side of the matter, but we can with the technology. We occasionally explain something substantive, but if you really don't understand anything about accounting and administration, it is more convenient to do it together with someone else.
01 Accountant
We will briefly touch on it in the context of Accounting versus administration: we are not bookkeepers. When configuring the digital administration, important things have to be filled in, such as your starting balance. These are questions for which we simply consulted our accountant. If you know everything about general ledger accounts, provisional entries, mutations and so on, you can probably fill this all in yourself. If not, it may be wise to consult an accountant. You do not have to transfer your entire bookkeeping immediately, but it is best to ask them to check whether you have set things up correctly when you have finished configuring your accounting package. By the way, we always advise everyone to hire an accountant, the fact that they earn themselves back is absolutely no myth. On the Business Growth site you will find a handy guide to finding a good accountant.
02 Choose accounting package
Choosing an accounting package is an important step. However, you will have to work with it regularly, so it is important to choose a package that suits you well. We have tested a lot of them and in our opinion there are two really good candidates: Exact Online and e-Boekhoudt.nl. Exact Online is the most extensive package, but also a lot more complicated and more expensive. e-Boekhoudt.nl is a bit more friendly, offers you everything you need and is a lot cheaper. In addition, the service is easy to integrate with, for example, your online store (although that is too extensive to describe in this article. For these reasons we chose e-Boek Keeping.nl as an example for this basic course. However, the principle is the same everywhere, so feel free to choose your own package.
03 Digital receipts
Of course, digital accounting also means that you have to digitize all your receipts. The package we use in this course includes an app that scans the receipts, but if you use another package that doesn't have it, we recommend Turboscan (can be found in both the Google Play store and Apple App Store) . With this app you can easily scan your receipts, after which they can be stored in the cloud. Small tip: teach yourself to scan receipts immediately when you receive them. That may look a bit crazy in the store, but it ensures that you really never lose a receipt again. Moreover, keeping up with your administration becomes a breeze, because you no longer have to scan all your receipts at the end of the quarter. The app costs 7 euros a lot, but it is well worth it.
04 Register
Most accounting packages offer you a free trial period, so you can try out the package in peace to see if it's right for you. We therefore recommend that you make use of it. We choose e-Boekhoudt.nl because we think this is the package that suits most people, and because we like the interface, but feel free to search for online accounting packages and try a few. In our example you surf to www.e-boekhoudt.nl where you then click on Trying out clicks. Then create an account as you would with any other site. You can try the site for 14 days, after that it will cost you 7.95 per month for the basic subscription and 5.95 per month for the billing module (which we strongly recommend).
05 Help Videos
One of the reasons we like the package of e-Boekhoudt.nl is that the site is packed with videos that help you to configure your administration digitally. We also know how it usually goes: you want to get started and don't feel like watching all kinds of videos first. However, be aware that it is about your administration, something you want to have well organized because it will save you many hours of work. Of course we explain how the basics work, but the videos go deeper into the matter and are therefore very instructive. Log in to the site and click on the top right Support. A new window will open in which you click on Video training. There you will find all the videos you need to better understand how the site works.
06 Opening balance
We immediately start with the hardest part: the opening balance, which can be found via Management / Opening Balance. This is basically the summary of all the financial aspects that make up your company: income, expenses, receivables, … If you have no idea what we are talking about, then you probably already use an accountant (because this is also part of your analog administration) and you can request this information from him/her. In any case, it is essential that the total of the left and right columns (ie the assets and liabilities) are equal. But before you can complete this, you must first set up your general ledger accounts.
07 Set up general ledger accounts
Don't be intimidated by a word like ledger account. You can best think of your administration as a large cupboard with drawers. Each drawer represents a part of your business, such as your bank account (payment method), a subscription to something (Profit and Loss), your inventory (Balance sheet) and so on. The word drawer will most likely not stress you out, and a general ledger account is exactly the same. It is therefore important for your online administration that you map out all elements of your company. click on Management and then General ledger accounts. You will see a lot of 'drawers' here, the majority of which you will never use. See if you can store all the costs and benefits of your company in one of these drawers. If not, create a new drawer, or general ledger account, yourself.
08 Creating relationships
For your administration it is of course important to know from whom you have received money and to whom you have paid money. For that reason, it is necessary to create relationships. You do that by clicking at the top Relationships and then Add in the left pane. This is quite simple, it simply concerns all contact details of the relevant customer or client.
09 Create products
Suppose we now ask you to create an invoice, then you probably simply fill in what you have done and how much it costs. The same goes for digital accounting, except that the accounting package wants to know how a particular product or service should be debited. You create products for that. click on Invoicing and then under Products and services on Add. You now need to enter a code for the service or product (you can think of this yourself) and a description (for example: DVD). Then choose a Unit, in our case Piece. If the unit you need (for example Word if you write articles and get paid per word) does not yet exist, you can create it under the heading Units to the left. Enter the purchase price if applicable, and the sales price excluding VAT. Select the VAT rate and the sales price including VAT will be shown immediately. Bee Contra account select in which 'drawer' this product belongs. That can be very general (Turnover group 1), or very specific (DVD). Although you must first have created a general ledger account for DVD. The handy thing is now: the VAT is automatically placed in the 'drawer' VAT to be paid.
10 Send invoices
The products you create are therefore used during invoicing. Click on the menu at the top Invoicing and then Add. Select a relation and fill in the relevant information. Then click Add product/service. Now when you click in the top field, you can add one of the products you have configured. You can immediately see why this is useful, all relevant information is immediately entered (but can still be changed if the price differs, for example). This way you add a line for each product or service. When you're done, save the invoice and send it. e-Boekhoudt.nl offers all kinds of templates for this.
11 Booking bills/receipts
In addition to income, you also have expenses. You book this by clicking on the tab on the site Accounting and then Invoices. Bee Type of booking do you choose Receive invoice. Choose a relation and fill in the information of the invoice (including the correct contra account). Click on Adding files if you want to upload the invoice. It is not convenient to use relations for receipts, after all, sometimes you buy something at the bookstore, which is not immediately a relation. In addition, receipts do not have an invoice number. In that case, click Statement/Receipts in the left pane. Choose the type of booking Spend money and with account indicate from which account you did this. You now also see: if you have multiple bank accounts, it is useful to also create multiple ledger accounts for them. click on Save to process the receipt. When you download the e-Boekhoudt.nl app, you can also scan and upload receipts directly from your smartphone.
12 Importing Mutations
You have entered your sent and received invoices in your digital administration, now it is important to link them to the actual transactions in your bank account. The reason for that is your balance, which, as the name suggests, must be in balance. For every ten euro bill sent, there must be a ten euro payment, and for every five euro you spend, there must be a five euro cash register receipt. That's why you're going to book those things against each other. The easiest way is to export your bank statements from your bank's site (each bank explains the process) and then click on Import under the heading Enter (tab Accounting). Upload the file, choose the appropriate bank account and then click Further. When the file has been processed, click on Go to unprocessed statement lines. There you can see all transactions in your bank account that are not yet linked to, for example, the invoices. For each mutation you can now indicate exactly which piece belongs to which. For example, every expense and all income is accompanied by an invoice and/or receipt.
Links
In principle you can do everything in your accounting package manually, but under the heading Management you also have the option to make all kinds of links. For example, you can first make a link with your accountant, so that he can access your administration and file your tax return, but you can also make a link with your bank, so that you do not have to manually import and export your transactions each time. Here you will also find the link with your webshop, so that you can automatically enter the invoices of orders into your digital accounting. It's not all that difficult, and on the support page you will find a detailed explanation of how it all works. We therefore recommend that you absolutely explore it.
