SubscribePractical Time Saving Tips
Quite often people ask how we use Saasu in our own business. That’s a big question so I won’t try an answer it all in this post so I’ll start with a couple of time saving tips we use.
We have hundreds of small dollar value online bills to pay in the Saasu business. Everything from domain names to application subscriptions like Google Apps. In short stacks of credit card transactions paid by directors and staff. How do we handle this efficiently:
One Touch Philosophy
When you receive an email bill for a payment you just made by credit card save it as a .PDF, .EML, .TXT or other file and immediately create the purchase transaction and attach this document to it. Go straight back to your email account when done and file/archive the email. Done, gone and dealt with.
The costs of not doing it this way are:
- You re-read the email bill another two or three times before you enter it.
- You lose the email bill in your already burgeoning email jungle.
- You risk deleting/archiving the email bill not having booked the expense and thus you miss the tax deduction or reimbursement.
- As the email bill gets older your memory fades and you contract a disease called “I can’t remember why I paid this?”
- It just gets lost in the ether - that place where things go when they aren’t as important as day to day survival
If you don’t book your own expenses just forward the email to your accounts person and have them follow the one touch process.
Another approach which works nicely is to import your credit card file (use the bank or credit card company’s export file e.g. Virgin uses the same format as Westpac) and simply clear the personal expenses using the “Delete Selected” button while you are in the “List of Uncategorised Imported Transactions” screen. You have to trust your credit card issuer and your suppliers to use this method. This Book-it-Danno approach doesn’t have much accounting rigor but it can save stacks of time. I’ll leave that pay-off dilemma with you 
Tip: Always put the suppliers invoice/bill number in your transaction. It makes it so much easier to find later and reconcile the suppliers account. You would be amazed how often you can accidentally pay for things twice (or they charge you twice). This will help highlight these occurrences.
Automating Regular Boring Stuff
Setup an automated purchase for constant amounts [Use:Main Menu>Setup>Recurring Transactions>Purchases]. As an example create a recurring purchase for $49 that you pay by direct debit to your Telco provider on the 15th of each month for your internet connection.
Always do a reconciliation during your accounting cycle period-end when you use automation to ensure payments have actually occurred. You never know when an expired credit card could result in failed payments as an example. Also, doing reconciliation’s might be annoying but it’s easier to tick something off than data enter the same things 12 times a year!
