Time flies when you’re running your own business—and that’s especially true during the busy holiday season. But with the new year just around the corner, it’s also the perfect time to start making resolutions to simplify your back-office operations for 2018.
If you feel stressed just
thinking about managing your books, you’re not alone.
PayPal is striving to help businesses streamline their back-office operations by working with trusted cloud accounting partner,
Xero. In fact, the winners of the
PayPal $10K Business Makeover are tapping into Xero’s expertise to streamline and automate their business operations for the new year, too.
Because business owners can learn from every situation, we took a look inside the accounting systems of our contest’s winners – searching for tips you can use to makeover your own back-office in 2018.
Hailing from Jacksonville, Florida, FORGE specializes in 3D design, printing and scanning services. Their website encourages customers to request estimates online. Unfortunately, FORGE lacks a business process to efficiently handle these requests, creating workstream overlaps for the owners and the potential for lost sales, too. To correct this, Aaron Berson, Xero Ambassador and Manager at EisnerAmper LLP, recommends they implement a customer relationship management system to help get things organized.
The fix: “FORGE needs to establish a solid CRM integration to help manage inbound inquiries and file exchanges. This will give their clients and prospects the ability to view the progress of their requests and projects,” states Berson. “Implementing a strong CRM system will also help manage project timelines & scheduling, invoicing, and customer communications.”
Born from a love of nature and enjoying it with their dogs, Rad Dog makes innovative products that get pets and their owners into the great outdoors together.Because they’re using desktop software that requires time-consuming, manual data transfers (including uploading PayPal transactions and importing bank transactions), there’s inevitable opportunity for human error. Plus, it’s not possible to get a real-time view into their accounting status since their system doesn’t operate in real time.
The fix: “By working with a cloud-based provider, Rad Dog can solve this issue by automating bank feeds into the accounting system,” says Berson. “Using a service like Xero enables integration with ecommerce partners such as Shopify and payments providers like PayPal. This type of 360-degree integration saves time and eliminates errors by connecting the accounting system directly to real-time data feeds.”
KidsGoCo creates children’s enrichment products that increase safety and entertainment for kids while taking the pain out of the commute for busy parents. Similar to RadDog, they’re spending too much time on redundant manual inputs. Since their business applications are not integrated, the team needs to manually enter customer information in several different places across their system.
The fix: “The individual tools being used are good, but their app integrations need to be cleaned up to ensure a better workflow,” Berson comments. “We recommend looking into service providers that integrate more seamlessly with the other app partners to create a smoother, more automated workflow. By partnering with companies that can link the front and back ends of the business, ultimately it optimizes and makes the business more efficient.”
If you’re experiencing similar challenges managing your small business accounting, make 2018 the year you reclaim lost time by automating your back-office to focus on growth.