- KEEP your invoices! When you pay bills for your business, hang onto them. Many businesses pay off the statement they get from the supplier, but bookkeepers still need the original invoice. Statements rarely tell what you paid for and most bookkeepers are only amateur mind readers.
- Tell us how the bill was paid. Was it cash or an account?
- Bank statements. To you they may just be a horrid bit of paper from that terrible institution, but these bits of paper help your bookkeeper make sense of the ins and outs of your business. Please keep them, treat them kindly and perhaps even give them a special file or folder to live in.
- Keep up with handing over stuff. There is nothing more frustrating – except all of the above – than getting an invoice that was paid last year while preparing this year’s books. It can also stuff your GST returns up.
- Any bills you pay where the type of purchase isn’t going to be obvious to all write a quick word or two on the invoice. While Lisa’s Mowing Services is pretty obvious, invoices to Lisa Pty Ltd for $456.23 and the like are hard to categorise… And bookkeepers and accountants love categories.
- If you hand write your own invoices, make sure you add the GST into the total correctly. Now this might sound obvious, but it is easy when you are trying to leave a job and/or get rid of a customer to overlook the GST bit of your invoice.
- If you decide to use a computer program to print out your invoices, try and ensure they are easy to understand. Don’t include past invoices or payments on an invoice, use a statement for that.
- Keep a little notebook for your bookkeeper – write down anything that might be important to them – ‘The Tax man rang’ or ‘The Accountant needs the books this afternoon!’
- Use a receipt book if your customers pay your invoices in cash, or, if you use an invoice book, scribble on the duplicate that the invoice was paid and when.
