Category: Resources

Travel Businesses Bookkeeping Services

Some businesses like Arboriculture, or the study, management, and cultivation of perennial woody plants, is a travel-intensive industry. That’s not surprising, given that an arborist must visit the trees to care for them. But that’s not the only job that requires a lot of travel. Almost every industry relies on business travel. International expansion, globalisation, and business mobility have made travel critical for everyone, from flight attendants and chefs working on cruise ships to truck drivers and even bloggers. As a result, businesses are confronted with several expense-management challenges. Here are some of these issues and how hiring a bookkeeper can help make accounting, finances, and bookkeeping less stressful.

Challenges of Travel and expense management

Poor data visibility

When you don’t know how your travelling employees spend your money, it’s impossible to manage your finances. Needless to say, when the time comes to update the books, businesses are confronted with errors, duplicate reports, missed receipts, and even potential fraud.

Failing to process expense reports

According to a 2019 travel and expense management report, nearly half of businesses fail to track travel costs successfully, making it impossible for the finance team to process their expense report.

Relying on manual processing

Claims applications, authentication, and approval processes consume your HR team’s valuable time. HR spends hours sorting through claims applications, determining which are allowable and which are not. Another time-consuming task is obtaining management approval. Companies must bear the costs of processing reimbursements for travel expenses and the resources required to report these costs. Not to mention the enormous margin for error and oversight when manually processing massive amounts of data.

Slow claims submissions and delayed reimbursement

Employees are frequently too preoccupied with their day-to-day office duties to submit their claims on time. As a result, there is a delay in reimbursements. It can be very frustrating and inconvenient for those who must plan their monthly expenses and have to wait weeks for reimbursements of their travel expenses.

Vague travel expense policies

A business’s travel policy is confusing when employees are only provided with instructions to keep “the company’s interest in mind” or “expenses to a bare minimum.” But that’s precisely how it is in many companies. Employees make poor decisions when they spend money on a business trip only to be told later that the expenses cannot be claimed.

Hiring a bookkeeper for travel-intensive industries

Managing day-to-day accounts in a travel-intensive business can be a difficult task that is best left to the professionals. A bookkeeper has the knowledge and experience needed to ensure that your company’s finances are recorded, the books are kept up to date, and the company financial statements are reconciled regularly. When it comes to managing business travel expenses, here’s what a bookkeeper can do:

• Record and tag every expense incurred according to trip type, department, and expense.
• Project travel spend trends
• Claim any travel expense that is tax-deductible
• Help the company set up proper travel expense procedures
• Collect travel receipts as per the company’s policy requirement
• Submit expense claims on time.

Hiring a remote bookkeeper

While bookkeeping is sometimes an in-house position, most companies today employ bookkeepers on a freelance basis. Do you have a startup or small business and are already juggling many tasks to get your business off the ground? Outsourcing a bookkeeper’s role may be more advantageous than hiring a full-time employee.

• Lower your overhead costs
• Get a virtual bookkeeper available to you every day of the week
• Have more time to focus on other business responsibilities
• Get a fresh perspective on how to manage your travel expenses satisfactorily
• Hire someone only based on needs – the size and complexity of your business – so you save valuable resources.

Final thoughts

Business travel expenses are rising across industries, and you must account for every expense. Rather than handling everything yourself, outsource your bookkeeping needs to a reputable company like Penny’s Bookkeeping Services. Penny’s offers affordable bookkeeping services by a certified bookkeeper. Penny’s can handle everything from payroll to tax returns and all your business travel expenses. Call or email us today so we can assist you in getting your finances in order.

Bookkeeping Services for Hospitality Industries

Bookkeeping is a crucial aspect of running a successful pub. As a pub owner, you have many responsibilities, including operations management, staff management, customer service, financial management, marketing, and inventory control. Pub owners need to be proactive, organized, and focused on delivering great customer experiences while ensuring profitability.

It can be challenging to keep track of your finances while juggling all of these tasks, particularly during busy periods such as New Year’s Eve. However, neglecting bookkeeping can lead to numerous problems, including an inability to track income and expenses, not knowing how much you owe suppliers, and overpaying or underpaying your taxes.

How to keep up with Pub’s Finance

To avoid these issues, it’s essential to establish a reliable system for bookkeeping. Here are some best practices to follow:

1. Keep Sales and Purchase Records

Pubs often have live entertainment and cash transactions, which can make it challenging to track sales and purchases. Ensure you issue receipts or generate invoices when making cash payments and take signatures on them. This will help you maintain accurate records and have evidence in case of a tax audit. Record your cash transactions carefully, and avoid using cash when possible. Accounting software like Xero or QuickBooks can help you manage cash transactions and maintain records of your sales and purchases.

2. Segregate Dry Sales from Wet Sales

Separate your dry sales (food) from wet sales (drinks) in your tills. This will give you a clear picture of your sales figures and help you keep track of your financial statement. Extracting sales figures from your till machine regularly will help you stay on top of your cash flow and make informed business decisions.

3. Ensure Your Employees Are on Payroll

Whether you employ temporary or full-time staff, it’s essential to enroll all your employees on the payroll system. If you don’t have the resources to manage payroll in-house, you can use accounting software that allows you to run payroll smoothly and have complete control over it. Since pubs can have a high turnover of staff, it’s essential to keep accurate records of your employees and their payroll information.

4. Keep Separate Records for Private and Business Expenses

Maintain separate records for private and business expenses to avoid confusion and ensure accurate bookkeeping. If you live within the pub and require utilities and food to manage your day-to-day life, these expenses should be accounted for separately and not included in your business account. It’s also important to maintain separate bank accounts for your private and business expenses to make sure your financial records are accurate and up to date.

In Conclusion

By following these best practices for bookkeeping, you can maintain accurate financial records, stay on top of your cash flow, and make informed business decisions. If you need help managing your bookkeeping or payroll, consider seeking the services of a professional bookkeeper, like Penny’s Bookkeeping Services,  who can provide insightful advice and services on managing your finances.

You are mandated by UK law to enrol your workers into a workplace pension scheme so that they can live a decent life after retirement. To enrol them, in the UK, there are several pension providers, but one that has been making headlines in recent years is Smart Pension. What is a Smart Pension? What are its features? And how useful is it for companies? We will look into each of them in detail as we read on.

First, let’s begin with a brief introduction to Smart Pension.

What is a Smart Pension?

Smart Pension is one of the UK’s largest workplace pension providers. It is a pension-delivering technology platform that makes it easier for employers to automatically enrol their employees into a pension scheme. It runs a Smart Pension Master Trust, which is a type of defined contribution pension scheme where you and your employees contribute an amount into the Smart Pension account regularly. The platform caters to the following:

• Companies that want to set up a new pension scheme.
• Companies that are looking to switch from old pension providers to Smart Pension.

Smart Pension features

Here is a list of a few features that your employees can enjoy using the Smart Pension platform.

It is a digital platform

Your employees can manage their pensions from the website or app from any place on any device. Additionally, the digital platform makes it easier for employers to perform admin tasks.

Smart rewards or discounts for Employees

Employees who have enrolled in the Smart workplace pension scheme get access to over 1,200 discounts which can be used at almost every major retailer in the UK. These discounts work on everything from shopping to holidays.

It offers flexible retirement solutions

Every individual has different financial needs in retirement. Keeping this in view, the platform offers a Smart Retire digital retirement dashboard that allows members to access and use their pension savings according to their requirements. For example, the platform allows members to earn a fixed monthly income, and it also enables members to withdraw money when it is required during retirement.

AI customer service

The platform integrates an AI customer service agent called SAVA, which answers human questions in real time. It works across all devices, be it smartphones or laptops. SAVA functions 24/7 and 365 days a year.

A retirement dashboard where employees can see all their retirement savings

Employees tend to change their jobs frequently. In doing so, they may lose track of their pension savings. Smart Pension offers a retirement dashboard where employees can search their previous pension savings and compile them in one place. This will allow them to keep track of all their pension savings.

What can Smart Pension offer employers?

• Smart Pension provides everything you need to meet the legal obligations in setting up a workplace pension in your organisation.
• The platform allows connecting with different payroll systems, which will make the management of the pension admin task easier.
• Smart Pension’s technology makes it easier for you to set up and run workplace pensions for your employees. Its excellent interface design helps users to navigate the system hassle-free.
• With Smart Pension, companies and their employees can reduce the pension charges that they are paying. Due to this reason, many companies prefer to shift from their earlier pension providers to Smart Pension.

Price structure of Smart Pension

The Smart Pension platform charges both the employer and the employee. An employer has to pay a monthly account charge of 15 pounds + VAT. This amount will be directly debited from the Debit card, which will be asked when the employer opens an account.

Apart from this, if you want additional services like reconciliation service, for this, Smart Pension charges an additional 30 pounds/half hour.

Employees/members need to pay an annual management charge of 0.30% and a monthly fee of 1.25 pounds.

Finally, Smart Pension has all the features that make it easy for companies to manage workplace pensions for their employees. Setting up the account can be done in minutes. It enables you to integrate with your payroll software to manage payroll hassle-free. For employees, it helps them to keep track of their savings. Having a Smart Pension is worth the money.

Conclusion

If you’re looking to use Smart Pension for enrolling your employees into the workplace pension scheme, we can help you with that. We are very well versed with the software and can help you in setting up and manage pension accounts on your behalf.

Processing Receipts with hubdoc

Hubdoc is an online application (desktop and mobile) that simplifies expense management by automating expense data capture and entry. It is owned by Xero, and included free in Xero plans.

What does Hubdoc do?

Here’s a brief look at the functionalities of Hubdoc:

Automatically ‘fetches’ financial documents

Hubdoc is able to auto-fetch documents from over 700 financial institutions, online vendors, utilities, and telecom providers.

Automatically extracts key data

The software automatically extracts information from receipts, bills, and invoices into your accounting software.

Creates invoices

When Hubdoc receives a document, it extracts key data such as vendor details, date and amount. From that data, it creates professional-looking invoices,  credit notes and  cash transactions, with a copy of the relevant document attached.

Serves as a single online repository of your financial documents

You can email invoices and receipts straight into Hubdoc, upload photos of the documents to the Hubdoc mobile app, or set up automated connections to move bills from suppliers directly into Hubdoc.

Organises your documents

Hubdoc automatically creates folders for documents after they have been uploaded or fetched, saving you the effort of organising the documents on your own. You can keep them in Hubdoc or move them to another cloud storage app your business uses.

Works with other accounting software

Apart from Xero, Hubdoc is compatible with QuickBooks Online. You can move documents in HubDoc to the cloud storage platform that you use, including DropBox, Google Drive, Box, SmartVault, and Sharefile.

Allows collaboration with accountants and bookkeepers

You can share access to your Hubdoc organisation with your bookkeeper, accountant, or a team member, and set rules around access for security purposes.

Pros and cons of Hubdoc

Hubdoc was launched in 2011, and acquired by Xero in 2018. Many daily HubDoc users are small business owners or bookkeepers, or accountants for small companies. A number of things work in the app’s favor, as explained below:

Advantages of Hubdoc

• It can code invoices to recurring suppliers, allowing the processing of multiple transactions through your accounting software.
• Thanks to automation, Xero users only need to reconcile the transactions against their bank statement lines in Xero.
• The app is easy to use. A structured dashboard clearly outlines the actions required from uploading to exporting documents.
• Allows you to easily generate monthly and yearly statement reports for audits or end of year tax filing.
• Hubdoc support is available through Xero Central. It is also accessible through the company website.
• Industry-standard levels of encryption and verification technology

Drawbacks of Hubdoc

Hubdoc doesn’t allow the ability to tag bank accounts with the last four digits of the credit/debit card. This is the most requested functionality for the application among users.

Hubdoc isn’t very flexible with the VAT amount posting, given sometimes between different businesses, the VAT amount calculation could have differences, but this can easily be corrected from Xero if you use both applications.

Overall, Hubdoc does what it promises smoothly, and more than adequately allows small business owners to track their expenses efficiently.

Hubdoc versus similar software

A comparable app to Hubdoc is Dext. Like Hubdoc, it is also available as a mobile app. It is not as intuitive as Hubdoc but offers more functionalities at multiple price tiers for complex expense management requirements.

Is Hubdoc worth it?

Good data entry is key to performing bookkeeping to the highest quality. Where before, you had to spend hours each week on manual data entry, tools like Hubdoc have emerged to automate this task. With Hubdoc, you can automate every step of the bookkeeping workflow in one place.

The app captures and syncs expense and other information seamlessly between accounting apps. You can track and manage expenses on-the-go using just your smartphone/tablet.

By automatically grabbing financial data from documents, Hubdoc eliminates the risk of erroneous human data entry. You/Your bookkeeper enjoy confidence that accurate invoices are being produced.

Hubdoc supports financial management. If you operate multiple businesses, you can add all those accounts to Hubdoc and view financials for all the businesses together in one place.

If you’re inundated with paper bills and receipts, Hubdoc is a way to go paperless whilst  keeping your financial documents organised, secure, and available 24/7. It is affordable for all business owners, and deserves to be looked at.

Penny’s Bookkeeping Services have encouraged most of our clients using Hubdoc to not only using Hubdoc to transfer documents as part of the workflow, but also using it for filing.  Some small businesses could save the cost of getting other third party cloud drives by saving the documents with Hubdoc.  Contact us if you have further questions or needs some guidance to start with.