Growth is a great thing for every business, big and small. When your business grows, you have the opportunity to expand your team, open new offices, and cater to more customers. Although seeing real progress for your business will leave you feeling great, handling your technical accounting responsibilities will become a challenge if you are not prepared for growth. Growth translates to handling payroll for more staff, sending out more invoices, and dealing with more complicated billing requirements. That is why your company needs a great accounting system to accommodate changing needs and ensure nothing stops you from driving further business improvements. Here are a few tips to help you develop a scalable accounting strategy that supports your business growth.
Follow GAAP
Your financial books are the baseline financial records for your company. That is why you must have effective bookkeeping and accounting systems in place. Your books draw the financial insights required to make strategic business decisions. Your books need to follow the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) if you plan to take out a loan, raise additional capital, be acquired, or pursue an IPO.
GAAP ensures that you create a clear, consistent, and comparable method of accounting. Your business financial records will be complete and homogeneous when you follow GAAP. All these are important to business financiers because they get a complete picture of the health of your business. Since GAAP guarantees consistency, business leaders can also compare the performance of the company month over month with accuracy.
GAAP is crucial for external activities like public trading, raising capital, competitive comparisons, and preparing for a transaction. When you follow GAAP, there is consistency in reporting, and your financial reports will be complete and comparable. Following GAAP can be beneficial if you must release your financial statements publicly.
Invest in Automated Systems Where Possible
Your business growth is limited when your daily accounting and bookkeeping tasks or other business processes are done by hand. Automation is transforming various industries, minimizing the need for more employees, and helping in decreasing overhead costs. Minor automation changes to your business structure can move more customers through the door without staffing limitations. Therefore, you need to review the unique needs of your business and identify processes that are repetitive and monotonous and see whether there are ways to automate them. Automating your business processes is the best way to enhance efficiency and prevent wasted resources.
Leverage Technology
Digital technologies are changing how finance and accounting are performed. Businesses that embrace and implement these novel solutions develop optimizations that relieve their teams of monotonous tasks and free up their time for more strategic pursuits. Some of the technologies that have been adapted for the accounting sector include:
- Advanced data analytics
- Software-as-a-Service
- Cloud-based infrastructures
- Machine learning
- Artificial intelligence
Outsourcing
When approaching a growth period, you may wonder if you need to add more financial staff to your payroll. However, you can choose outsourcing options to help you benefit from specialized skills without hiring more full-time employees. Outsourcing your accounting and bookkeeping needs is a great way of reducing your expenses without sacrificing the talent required to keep your business growing. Start by identifying activities that can be outsourced, such as payroll, accounting, technology implementation, tax preparation, and more. Then find professionals that can fill these gaps and provide excellent services for your business.
Think About the Bigger Picture
As your business grows, it’s important to anticipate potential challenges and address them before they become operational issues. This applies to your accounting as well. It’s a good idea to set up efficient, scalable accounting and bookkeeping systems early in the development of your business, as they will save your company time and money in the long run. If you let things get out of hand, you risk overwhelming your team, increasing the risk of mistakes and even slowing down your entire business. By making your bookkeeping and accounting needs a top priority from day one, you can create a scalable accounting strategy to support your business through all growing phases.