6 accounting tips for smooth business management

Are you looking for accounting advice to help you manage your business better? Then you've come to the right place.

A good entrepreneur is not necessarily a good accountant. However, knowing how to do your accounts and managing your finances well is a guarantee of confidence for banks, your customers and employees. Your accounts are a cornerstone of your decision-making, enabling you to anticipate cash flow fluctuations, for example.

What can you do to set up good accounting management without spending too much time on it, and with or without a chartered accountant? Here are a few accounting tips and tricks to help you get to grips with this new way of managing income and expenditure.

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Tip 1: Prepare yourself to understand accounting better

You can't improvise accounting, and it's a complex exercise for a novice. Except in special cases, all forms of business require bookkeeping in accordance with the Plan Comptable Général (PCG), the regulatory accounting standard in France.

Moreover, French regulations can be rich and complex. So don't forget to find out about all the legal requirements in force, such as keeping your annual accounts, regular bookkeeping and publication of accounting records.

Don't wait until your first financial year to get your hands on the figures! As soon as you set up your business, you need to look at this issue and prepare a chart of accounts that is tailored to your structure.

You can call on the services of experts in this field: outsourced CFOs or chartered accountants. They can give you valuable advice on specific points. Or you can choose the chartered accountant who will take charge of your accounts.

Tip 2: Adopt the right accounting management reflexes

Business accounting doesn't happen overnight. It is essential to the smooth running of your business and provides a real-time view of its health. Here are a few tips to help you see things more clearly:

• record all your company's accounting documents as you go along: purchase or sales invoices, receipts, expense claims, etc,
• Follow up regularly - why not monthly - to check that everything is up to date,
• Organise your accounting documents so that you can find them easily and ensure the annual closing.

Tip 3: Anticipate accounting deadlines for better management

It's best to anticipate these deadlines so that you don't have to deal with them at the last minute:

• VAT returns: monthly, quarterly or annually,
• preparation of annual accounts: balance sheet, profit and loss account, etc,
• income tax returns,
• drawing up pay slips and declaring social security contributions,
• annual declaration of unified social data,
• various tax returns: vocational training, apprenticeship tax, construction effort, etc.

💡 Are you a self-employed entrepreneur (or microentrepreneur)? Your status gives you special accounting obligations. Find out more about our accounting advice for self-employed entrepreneurs:

Tip 4: Separate business and personal accounts

It is vital to keep business and personal accounts separate for the company manager and his partners. Every business expense must be justified; it will be easier to trace business expenses paid from a "business" account.

In your company, everything must be recorded separately to avoid any abnormal acts of management or misuse of company assets.

What's more, since 1 January 2015, even self-employed entrepreneurs have been required to have a dedicated bank account specifically for their business activity. Subject to certain conditions, however. Under the Pacte Act, this measure remains optional for self-employed entrepreneurs whose turnover does not exceed €10,000 per year for two consecutive years.

Tip 5: Choose easy-to-use accounting software

Choosing accounting software can be a complex task, given the range of products on the market. But there are solutions to make it easier for you to keep your accounts up to date. Solutions that can also save you time. Here are a few examples:

• Clic&Tag is an online and mobile accounting software package designed to help small businesses and the self-employed to :
  • prepare estimates and invoices,
  • file VAT returns
  • enter expense reports and track them using dashboards,
  • use the services of a chartered accountant for the rest of the bookkeeping.
• Itool Accounting is an online accounting service that helps business managers manage their general accounts:
  • journal
  • general ledger
  • balance sheet
  • profit and loss account
  • tax returns.
• Sage 50Cloud Ciel is both an accounting tool and a sales management tool. This solution allows you to centralise all your data in a single tool, enabling you to :
  • create and monitor quotes and invoices,
  • monitor the management of purchases, stocks and sales,
  • automatically integrate processed information into the sales management solution.

In addition to the solutions suggested above, you can also opt for a business-oriented solution. Depending on your professional sector, some software suppliers offer solutions tailored to your needs. A construction company, for example, will be more likely to opt for a tool that offers job costing (quantity of supplies, consumables, etc.).

These different features will help you decide what to look for. Find and compare all the online accounting software on our dedicated page.

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Tip 6: Choose a chartered accountant

Business accounting isn't always easy, especially when it comes to drawing up the annual balance sheet. That's why it's vital to put the right tools in place as soon as the company is set up, so that your company's accounting, tax and social security operations are secure.

In addition, you will certainly find it useful to choose a chartered accountant to support you in this task and to give you the benefit of his or her expert advice. The question is: how do you choose your chartered accountant? There are a number of factors to consider:

• make sure that your chartered accountant is qualified to carry out his work, and that he is registered with the Ordre des experts-comptables;
• determine your needs and the accounting issues you face;
• define the budget you wish to devote to this expertise.