How a VA can help you love the numbers in your business

Here in France it’s tax season and questions abound in groups on social media:

• When’s the deadline?
• Which box do I use on the form to declare my income?
• Do I have to declare offshore accounts?

It’s the time when business owners have to make sure that they know their total revenue for the previous year; whether they made a profit or a loss, and ensure that their accounts are up to date.  It’s the time they have to stop being an ostrich and really look at their numbers.  I’ve heard of business owners who hit the VAT limit in September or even before, but didn’t realise until weeks or months later, leaving them to send some awkward emails to the tax office.

VAs can help business owners with so many aspects of business management and one of these is bookkeeping so let’s look at 5 ways a VA / bookkeeper can help:

• Manage your expenses: do you have a stash of paper expenses in a corner of your office, or maybe you’re already using an app, but still need to categorise and check the details which have been automatically recognised by AI. You’ll also need to add any invoices from suppliers that haven’t gone in to the system automatically, although there are ways of setting up filters in your email account that can do this.
• Send your invoices: how many invoices do you send each month? Are they automatic or do they need to be manually generated?  How much time would you save if you delegated this task to a VA?
• Track unpaid invoices and be the first line in efficient debt recovery. Are you doing anything about unpaid invoices?  Do you know how much you’re owed?  A VA can send those first reminder emails, and often this will be enough to get them paid.
• Keep track of your numbers: a VA can keep track of your income and your outgoings for you, and set up the systems which you can consult at any time so that you always know where you are.
• Carry out basic accounting: ie. Bank reconciliation in your accounting software. A VA can help with the reconciliation of your bank statements in your accounting software and if done regularly this will save you so much stress when year-end comes round.  If you’ve hit the VAT limit they can also prepare your VAT declarations for you.

Bonus: a VA can also keep track of other numbers in your business, like website analytics or social media statistics.

Investing in a VA to streamline the management of the numbers in your business is a no-brainer, and can save you so much hassle when the time comes round to file your taxes.  A VA can also keep up to date with any changes in procedure and add the filing dates to your agenda, so that you’re always ahead of the game.

A VA can also support you in applying a methodology in your accounting, such as profit first, helping you stick to the commitment you’ve made and providing a welcome accountability partner.

If you don’t already have a VA helping you with the numbers in your business then I’d love to chat about how My Bilingual VA could support you.  Send me an email via my website or drop me a message via my profiles on social media.

NB. If you’re in the UK, then your VA will need to be registered with HMRC in order to comply with local AML regulations.

Photo by Micheile Henderson on Unsplash