Why organisation is important within your business

Any organisation that produces either goods or services, or both, with the aim of earning a profit is a business. This sounds simple and it has many takers too. However, running a business is far from easy. It can actually be quite challenging. This is why in the US, almost 50% of new businesses fold up within the first five years itself.

Getting finances right

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From the lack of a clear business plan to limited knowledge of the target market, there are many reasons why businesses fail. One significant way to ensure smooth sailing is to have professionals in key business units. These include leadership, finance, marketing, and product development among others. With these in place, each team can have its own plan, processes, and results, that feed into the business.

To give an example, getting accounting practices right can be a challenge. But a rigorous financial setup can prevent excessive cash burn for a company. It can also streamline processes like invoicing, making bank deposits, withdrawals, and taxes. These give visibility on the cashflow and potentially even make it smoother. This is a big reason why finance is one of the fundamental roles or functional areas within a business.

Functions of the finance department

Healthy practices in keeping business accounts can go a long way in ensuring a company’s sustainability. A finance department’s key functions are as follows:

  • Maintaining financial statements: Every business needs to keep a record of their accounts in three well-defined financial statements. These are the profit and loss (P&L) account, the cash flow statement, and the balance sheet. The P&L shows the extent to which a company is making money, or not. The cash flow statement reflects the liquidity position, which is important to ensure that all bills can be paid smoothly. And the balance sheet allows for a stock taking of the company’s financial position.
  • Ensuring compliance: A well-run company has to ensure that it complies with regulations regarding tax payments and employee benefits. An efficient accounting department is able to consolidate these pay-outs along with day-to-day expenses to ensure that all requirements are met.
  • Assessing performance: The finance department does not just maintain financial statements; it also analyses them. This helps in making an assessment of how healthy the business is. Taking note of aspects like profits and cash available also helps them plan better for the future.

Keeping good accounts

Back in the day, all accounts were manually maintained. This sounds like a laborious process considering the technology we have available today. It was also more prone to human error. However, we have come a long way since.

There are a number of accounting software’s and online resources available today that make the process even simpler. One example is Intuit QuickBooks, which supplies a range of accounting support products like tax forms, checks and deposit slips.

Consider deposit slips, which record information on cheques and cash being deposited into the accounts. Intuit QuickBooks printable deposit slips, eliminate the need for double entry, reducing time spent on the task. Its manual deposit slips allow up to 18 entries at a time and come with carbonless duplicates. This also creates efficiency in accounting and allows for better organisation of financial transactions.

Focus on finance

The main takeaway here is that organisation is fundamental to business. In finance, particularly so. It supports all other departments in ensuring that business objectives are achieved by setting aside monetary requirements. Any new business should take note of this, considering that there’s a high business failure rate for start-ups. However, there’s plenty of help at hand, with a choice of accounting software and online resources to streamline financial processes. Intuit QuickBooks deposit slips are one example, that is a time-efficient way of keeping track of money going into the bank account. Availing of these solutions could make a business more organised. This can be one step towards ensuring business sustainability.