Billzone Blog

Five Tips to Get Your Invoicing Ready for a New Tax

Changing over to a new tax scheme can be daunting for small to medium sized business owners, but there are some things you can do in advance that can help.

Update Your Accounting System

Ensure your accounting system can handle the change. If it can't, make sure to plan a changeover to a new system that can, or design a workaround so you can accommodate the new tax.

Double-Check Invoicing

Check over your invoicing thoroughly at the time of changeover to make sure that you have applied the tax correctly for each product or service.

Get the Team Involved

If you have a larger business, make sure to involve all the different divisions in a discussion about the change. There will often be some expertise unique to different departments that can help your transition.

Prepare Your Suppliers

Prepare your suppliers to expect the change. For example, BillZone allows your subcontractors to generate their own invoice to you, which speeds up Accounts Payable (they get their bills in on time) and Accounts Receivable (you immediately generate invoices immediately from the same data). They might be surprised if the tax rate changed on their invoice and they were not expecting it, or forgot to implement it themselves.

Confirm the Date, and Find Out When You're Affected

Be sure of the changeover date, and check to see if you will be affected in advance. For example, you might be required to self-assess for goods or services sold in advance of the changeover date but delivered after. Also, this could affect the timing of invoicing for certain aspects of your business.

Why Basic Project Management Tools Are Good

Ok, you own a small business with several projects on the go at any one time. Why bother with keeping project records? I mean, you've got it all organized in your head, right? Besides, you looked at project management programs and found that they were overkill and wasted a huge amount of your time. Well, there are some very good reasons to use at least some basic project management tools in your business.

Try answering these questions:

- If your customer calls you and asks how much time you've burned to date on her project items, can you tell her right then and there? Or do you have to compile a bunch of information (and phone people) before you can tell her?

- Is your business relatively free from costly bookkeeping mistakes?

- Do all of your bills go out on time, all the time?

- Can you measure your success over the past few years? Can you see how often you've been on time for delivery of your projects?

If you answered no to any of these, you need some basic project management tools. Forget complex project plans, you just need to set up your project with a good list of deliverables on it. Make sure your people can access it and update it in real time, so that you or your bookkeeper don't have to spend as much time on it. You'll know how much you've burned and what the item completion status is at any one time, for all your projects, across your whole business.