I often get asked how a business can minimise the time spent (and thus money) “doing” their accounts.

The first step is to get online to create access, convenience and remove tasks that you otherwise have to do such as backups, upgrades and installs.

Secondly, and more importantly, you need to change your thinking to “generating” your accounts. You accounts can be a smooth, automated pipeline of transactions. It doesn’t have to be data entered.

Many businesses I meet still “do” their accounts while they should be generating them. This is about connecting and automating your accounts using a variety of techniques that are NOT limited to bigger businesses. The reality is that there will always be an element of data entry but it can be massively reduced to a small fraction of your work-flow.

There really is only 3 ways of generating your accounts. Most other methods are a variation on these themes or a hybrid of them.

We are interested in our customers saving time so if you have any questions post a comment or get in touch. We are firstly in the business of selling time savings, secondary to that is the accounting software.

REAL TIME - Straight through processing

“Are you serious Saasu? I’m a consulting business, it can’t be automated.”

Even a consulting businesses where you would think it’s hard to automate you can achieve 60-80% automation of transactional work flow. If you think about it (look at your statements), you pay for the same things over and over. Mobile, phone, internet, rent, electricity, wages etc. Often the frequency is consistent and it may only be the amount that varies. These transactions can all be automated to the point where there is no data entry (constant amount) or a followup edit (change amount). Expenses on credit cards can be captured by importing credit card data and bank statements. You simply clear what isn’t needed and apply account codes to the remainder.

This is the best by far on a cost per transaction capture analysis we’ve done of the variety of methods. We call this “exceptions based accounting”.

Highly transactional business models should automate as much as they can using recurring Sales and Purchases for all your normal recurring revenue and fixed costs. If applicable, connect your point-of-sale (POS), e-commerce website, project management and CRM systems to Saasu via the API or using a Connector. Transactions can occur in real time automatically. Contacts can update across systems. New customers can be created, invoiced, payment processed and emailed paperwork automatically without human cost, resources and risk.

Saasu provides customers with shopping carts, software connectors and payment gateway connections to assist in creating a straight through processing business model.

NEXT DAY - Feeds and Import

This method works well for micro enterprise but starts to fall apart as you grow the business or as your business becomes more technically complex. e.g. inventory, time and project based businesses. It doesn’t scale for complexity or compliance.

Under this method you export you bank statement from online banking and import it into your accounting file. Nearly all accounting systems have this feature including Saasu, Sage and Quickbooks. Systems like Banklink and Xero have taken it a step further by providing a service to do this import step for you on a next business day basis or weekly basis. For micro a enterprise this is about an extra $360 per year above Saasu’s pricing. Bank fees may also be charged by your bank account on a per-transaction basis for data feeds. Feeds aren’t real time but they are convenient and close enough for micro businesses. To a degree you are trusting the bank or card company’s data to be correct.

DELAYED - Data entry

Data entry is by far the most expensive and unfortunately the most common. Data entry should be about exceptions so bookkeeper and accountant skills can be reserved for advice and higher level tasks. A good bookkeeper is the difference between order and disorder, fear and anxiety. Automate as much as possible and have your bookkeeper or admin staff be you assistant CFO to your business rather than spend your dollars on them just doing mundane data-entry that can be done by a computer.

I was going through my e-mail this morning and noticed that I use the “Starred” feature in Gmail to remind me when I promise something to a customer. At Saasu we have started tracking promises using Saasu activities.

I guess as business people we all probably have some room for improvement in fulfilling on promises. Are we tracking our promises well enough? To-do lists capture many of them but what about those fleeting promises that are actually bigger than you think?

You would think all businesses would be great at tracking promises. Especially since most people are very worried about what people think of them and their business. Integrity is probably one of the most important values in a business.

The reason our businesses are less than perfect at keeping and tracking promises is because our businesses a built on people. Those people are only human, they forget, make mistakes, run out of resources to deliver on promises etc. So systems can help with this problem.

At Saasu we track defects, support and feature requests daily. All of which are promises. When we miss promise dates I personally feel it so we are always trying to improve on the system. Sure we could stop promising but that’s just a cop out. Our customers are paying us money to develop, improve and keep ahead.

Create an Activity type called Promises in Saasu.

One way we are doing this is by using Saasu activities to start tracking Promises. You can do this also. Create a Tag called Promise and give it type Activity. Put all your promises into Saasu as Promise Activities. You then have an easy way to list/print/track your promises, due dates and attribute them to the right people.

Anyone got any other ways they track their promises, work or personal?

Pic: Discoodoni on flickr.com

Clone, Connect, Automate - saving time and reducing errors is just the beginning.

One the of great things about SaaS is the ability to opt-in permanently (or on a transaction by transaction) basis to information from a counter-party such as supplier, customer, employee or other legal entity you ‘trade’ with in a broader sense.

We call this automated exchange of information ‘Transaction Cross-Docking’ or TCD, just like the traditional cross-docking of pallets of physical materials in warehouses (more…)

Sources of quality ideas and ways to manage them

Are you starved for new ideas or do you find yourself seeing so many ideas out there that sometimes you feel the information floods over you? Either way, there are idea sources and filtering techniques that can help.

Do you find yourself so time poor that you can’t spend 2 hours reading a high quality book on a new concept or global trend? In 20 minutes with the right material (there is some right here) you can get the same outcome.

Any idea or piece of information can be slotted into three clear realms or stages of knowing that a gentleman called Plato did some groundwork on without the benefit of technology to accelerate his learning:

1. What you know you know
2. What you know you don’t know - or know a little about but not enough to be of much use
3. What you don’t know you don’t know - blind spots to which you are completely oblivious

Opportunity exists in that final point, we would like to share some quality sources with you.
(more…)

The big problem with technology is that it can be so darn good you want to use it all. Making matters worse, it’s cheaper and cheaper so there are less purchase barriers.

Like all consumption, too much technology will give you business lethargy. Wasted time, wasted investment and the scary one - redundant technology (that’s the kind you stopped using almost as soon as you paid for it).

The golden rules of technology investment:

1. Use a few really good technologies to keep it simple.
2. Make sure you make full use of those technologies.
3. Be prepared to change a technology for a better one.

Use A Few Really Good Technologies To Keep It Simple

What is the turning point where buying technology stops generating productivity gains. I’d argue it is a lot sooner than you think. Complexity costs money and distractions cost money. What is a really good technology:

Good Engineering and Design

The automotive industry has proven this time and again. Engineer and design well and the market will be all over your business to buy your goods and services. People will pay disproportionate amounts of money versus the practical gains. Does Hyundai really underperform a BMW when taking you from A to B. No, but the BMW driver is willing to pay for the design and engineering difference that gives them sheer driving pleasure. You can have 3 or 4 Hyundai’s for the same money. The point being it is disproportionate assessment of value by the consumer. People don’t buy on price, it’s a 2nd or 3rd order consideration.

Photo by The Aga

Automation Creates Time Where It Didn’t Exist

I always say to people,

Experiences and time are limited in life, money isn’t.

The number one thing you all want more of in your life and seem powerless to get it is (more…)

Two major global developments in the SaaS (Software as a Service) world show the blue sky is really here today. (more…)

It’s funny where you pick up great insights. I was watching a national gardening program and one of the winners of their annual Gardener Of The Year prize was asked by the host how she succeeded in building such an amazing garden. Her answer floored me…
(more…)

Bacn is simply spam you asked for. It’s the dozens of emails you get that you would like to get (sometimes) but they still annoy you and more importantly they chew up your precious time.
(more…)

Productivity is king, I have noticed I am most productive when isolated with controlled connectivity. Let me explain. By controlled connectivity I’m referring to having control in who connects to me and when. In this situation people can’t get me immediately on a land line, mobile, Skype or Instant Messenger but they can send me e-mails, leave voice mails or a message with our receptionist. This means I can work on that one thing I really need to get done. (more…)

We are looking at sustainable business design. We want to be sure we are doing the right things in the new Saasu offices in the Sydney CBD, Australia. The offices will house labs, accounts and operations.

The work environment and how we work in it is one of the biggest sustainability factors we will face. However, it is second only to the impact we have at a global level by selling an environmentally sustainable product such as the Saasu web finance engine.
(more…)

Practical 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!

When you lose your operating system (OS) or it has a bit of a fit during upgrade you will instantly see the joy and power of SaaS (Software-as-a-service).

To recover your computer after a crash, virus, failed upgrade or other reason you should only need to perform very basic tasks. However, this is only the case when you are under the care of SaaS (online applications). The primary tasks are to re-install your browser and Adobe reader.

Meanwhile software users will need to be reinstall programs one CD at a time (if you can find the CD’s). You may need to find your out of date backups to recover lost data files (if you remembered to do your backups). You may need to re-engineer information (reinvent what your desktop and document files used to look like). You’ll almost definitely need to have a quiet little cry into your hands (or smash the screen). Worst of all face your fellow staff if you were slack and didn’t do the backups like everyone told you to.

It hurts but fear not as SaaS is here to help. She’ll care for you like no OS ever did. She wont bug you for upgrades, setup, disk required notifications or Product Keys. She’s a kind understanding mother who’s job is to nurture you and give you time to grow and play like a young child. She does all the nasty stuff behind the scenes for you like backing up, upgrading, installing and making sure you’re wearing the right colours (operating system and browser neutral).

I know the cost of losing the OS only too well. I lost my laptop operating system last year but I was lucky because I’m already under the care of mother SaaS. I had already moved all my photo’s to Flickr.com an online photo warehouse. Other SaaS products I use are Google Apps, Gmail and obviously Saasu. The impact was limited, I was back up and running in hours not days. Had I not been nurtured by my SaaS mother I would have lost a couple of months worth of photos which I probably wouldn’t have backed up at that time (i.e. My wife would hate me!).

Brad Howarth writes a great piece about this topic in his blog.

In a similar vein, Apple 3rd party developers are hitting frustrations dealing with the iPhone OS but SaaS developers building online applications for the iPhone have no such problem. The OS becomes virtually irrelevant in the world of SaaS. Web browser based it’s clearly less restrictive.

If SaaS is like a mum then the browser is your best mate, he’s light and nimble, he’s winning the battle over software, costs nothing and gives you access to all your stuff wherever you are. Feed him with lots of web applications and your best mate will watch your back by saving you time.

There are many methods for reducing input errors in your online accounting file. Accountants use workflow processes that they know will create more predictable accuracy. Learning about some of these and adopting them in your accounting routine is a good investment in time that will reward you for many years to come. Some of these methods are discussed below, however there are many more:

Basic review of your transaction listings

As you create transactions they will appear in your transaction list for the date period applicable. The process is usually to Add a new transaction to the List, Save and Close the transaction and then check the transaction for correctness. You cannot check all the detail for transaction but the main items such as Date, Amount and Contact can be verified. This is the most basic and quickest, but least thorough, of checks you can do.

Review of your Transactions by Account report

This is a good report for checking you have used correct tax codes and ensuring you have chosen the correct Account for you transactions. You might scan the report to ensure that (for example) all your sales appearing in an Account for Income: light fittings would have the same tax code. You might also check that there aren’t any stray transactions in this Account that shouldn’t be there.

Use the duplicate function for adding transactions

When you use the Duplicate button on any Add/Edit Transaction screen you are creating an exact copy of the transaction you are viewing with a few fields cleared like the Date for example. This helps produce consistency in your transaction adding over time as you will be using the same Account, Tax Codes and Summary as you are duplicating the information not entering it.

Use Transactions Lists to help in adding transactions

A good example of this is when you have regular periodical payments you make for things such as subscriptions, rent, bank fees that are often the same each month except for the transaction date.

1. Load the Transactions for a Contact and click the plus icon next to the transaction to load a duplicate.
2. Then you can include the date for this new transaction and amend any other differences (eg. Summary..”Jul08 rent” to “Aug08 Rent”) and then save the transaction.

Use the Transaction Lists to help in adding transactions

As in the above example you can create a list of transaction for the previous month (or period). Use the same process to create new transactions for the new month (or period).

Additional

Make sure you have paperwork, invoices, and bank statements to back up you data entry. Just assuming these things will happen each month (or period) doesn’t mean they actually do!

Here’s some ideas to help save some time -

• Group Pays for processing payroll - Speed up you payroll processing.
  Less data entry
• Fixed bank fee (annual) - Many banks will offer an annual bank fee as one payment instead of the usual monthly fees
  Less data entry and reconciliation entries
• Fixed bank fee (monthly) - those intra-month fees for ATM and Internet Banking usage can oftne be paid as a fixed monthly fee in some business accounts.
  Less data entry and reconciliation entries
• Pay multiple bills from one vendor all at once - This is possible with vendors who have longer payment terms. If you can get vendors to stretch their terms to 3 months from the usual 7 to 30 days then at least you reduce the payment processing work when you write one cheque, or process one payment, for a set of invoices.
  Less paperwork and data entry. In the USA this is paying on Bill/Statement rather than per Invoice
• Dealing with vendors who insist on onerous paperwork - If you receive an excessive number of documents from a vendor, which may include; statements, invoices, reminders and other forms of vendor communication.
  Consider this time cost they are imposing on your business. Some courier companies bill weekly while others are monthly
• Underestimating the cost of processing a transaction - If processing payment early saves you time, and that time value in dollars outweighs the funding cost of spending your cash early then it may pay to clear the payment paperwork earlier.
  A classic example is very small reseller/commission payments
• Buying multiple services/products from one vendor - If you can obtain a discount for buying more products from one source, receive less paperwork, reduce your payment processing work and obtain more lenient terms then this may work for you. Again there are many flow-on advantages like shorter bank statements and less reconciliation’s work results in time cost savings.
  A classic example is with stationary suppliers. Many businesses deal with 3 or more stationary companies. If this saves you lots of money then excellent! If not why put up with the extra paperwork?
• Generally employee expenses are time expensive - Setting up a Motor Vehicle fuel account may be easier than managing those payments as reimbursements through salary or organising lots of paper receipts every month.
  Some companies pay employees slightly more and have their employees account for and claim minor work expenses through personal tax