 Financial
Savvy - Creating Spreadsheets
By Debbie Patterson - Odessey Business
ServicesAs we finish summer and all
the holidays and down times involved in that, the filing pile has built up
and the business receipts are a mess in a box, bag or pile. Now is a great
time to organize them before they get out of control.
Sorting the business receipts is the first step, but why not take it one
step further and get a basic set of books set up now. This will be a great
help when tax season comes. The end result of not keeping your records
organized is a Safeway bag or shoebox full of receipts at tax time. This is
always a danger since not knowing what’s in the bag also means you don’t
know what’s missing from that bag. A higher tax bill for your
disorganization CAN BE avoided.
With Revenue Canada doing more audits than ever, every organized record is
proof that you run your company efficiently. An organized set of books will
reduce time spent with an auditor or eliminate a large debt to be paid to
Revenue Canada due missing information at that crucial time.
Buying a professional accounting program may not be a good idea unless you
have accounting knowledge or someone to do the books for you. Another
alternative is to use the tools you have available to you regardless of your
computer knowledge. One of the best tools available to anyone is a
“spreadsheet” program. Almost all computers will have one, if not Excel with
Microsoft Office, then Microsoft Works will work just as well.
A spreadsheet is a computerized ledger book which many people still use as a
paper trail to keep track of expenses for their business. A spreadsheet can
be customized, modified and programmed to be as user friendly as you are or
as complex as your business needs to be.
You can start with a spreadsheet just to enter the receipts you have and get
a total without an adding machine tape. Taking it to the next level, you can
create a “formula” to split out and total the GST from those receipts to
make GST filing easier.
You can set up the spreadsheet so that you have every month on a different
sheet with a yearly sheet that grabs totals from the monthly sheets. You can
set up as many categories as you want to get as detailed a look at your
companies financials from any angle. Even a “Balance Sheet” or “Income
Statement” can be created that will take totals from the yearly sheet and
produce a set of financials that your bank may need to see.
A spreadsheet can also be used to set up a company invoice, packing slip or
statement. One spreadsheet can be created for entering all of your customer
details including their address, phone number, email and yearly sales. This
can be a master that is then exported into a database program. Your logo can
be imported and you can have a template for labels based on a customer list
imported from a database.
Keeping inventory can be very easy with the right programming of a
spreadsheet. Products can be entered with a specific code, order date, sell
date, quantity and even if the sheet gets very large, using the sort and
filter commands can search for and present only the information you need to
answer any question you may have about your inventory.
Once the inventory is in a spreadsheet format, as well as customers and
vendors, it will only take a short time to format it to export directly to a
computerized accounting program such as Quickbooks or Simply Accounting once
you become ready for the switch.
The possibilities are endless beginning with the most basic of information
to complex financial data gathered from many different spreadsheets set up
for different information. It’s all based on using the tools you have at
your fingertips.
Debbie Patterson is the owner of Odessey Business Services &
offers services to consult & educate in the growth & understanding of your
business. Visit
www.odesseybusiness.com for details on the services
that suit your company’s growth stage best. Or call directly at 403.
816.5098. |
