Are You Keeping Your Records Up To Date?

As you head into the new financial year, it’s a good time to review your work processes. Are there any systems you can update to make your working life easier and assist with compliance?

One elephant that’s often left stomping in the corner of the room is record keeping.

As a contractor, you may think there’s no need for a fancy electronic record keeping system – with just a few invoices going out each month and limited expenses, it’s just not worth the cost or the time to research your options and learn to use a new program.

All you have to do is sort, date and store your paperwork, receipts and payments in individual months and record your transaction dates and payment amounts, right?

And, because things are kept manual, you’re not at risk of data corruption or theft.

Uh-Oh!

But what happens when you get busy and let things slip? How do you find the time to get your financial records back under control?

These days many contractors use accounting software programs to capture information, generate reports and meet tax and legal reporting requirements.

Ultimately, they find these programs make it quick and easy to generate orders and invoices on the spot as well as PAYG records and debtor reports. Plus, there’s no need for manual calculations – the system calculates amounts and generates all the reports needed at the push of a button.

Furthermore, accounting programs help you by automatically keeping up with the latest tax rates, tax laws and rulings, and enabling you to email invoices to clients, orders to suppliers, or BAS returns to the Australian Taxation Office.

Being electronic, there’s no paper to become lost, stolen or destroyed in a fire – so long as you regularly back up your files or save them to the Cloud.

Of course, there will always be the need to sit down and enter your orders, invoices etc, and pay your bills. Despite this, chances are, you’ll find going electronic record keeping lifts the huge burden of time and stress from your shoulders.

At Ayers, we draw on 20 years of contractor payroll knowledge and experience, backed by award winning payroll systems and software, to ease the load for contractors like you. Talk to your Ayers Group consultant today about how we can manage your payroll or for advice on an electronic record keeping system to suit your needs.