The best digital tools for SMEs to manage their finances
Tuesday 6th December 2022
Having a great product that sells well makes running a business exciting but also very challenging. Running a successful business means having to keep on top of your company’s finances and how this is handled could be the difference between its success and failure. From invoicing to payroll, expenses to general accounting, finding the time to do this well when also focusing on growth can at times seem like an impossible task.
Luckily, modern technology has produced a variety of tools designed to help small business owners with the difficulties of financial management; leaving time and space to focus on growth and development. We have come up with some of the many financial tools designed to help small to medium businesses with this problem and we hope these will help.
1. Accounting software
A decent accounting and bookkeeping software package can help enormously. Having organised financial records make filing taxes each year easier and much less stressful. A package to enable accounting tasks to be performed easily will include invoicing, expense tracking, automatic billing, payroll and budgeting tools. These will help prepare digital records for tax and free up a lot of time and resources. It won’t reduce the need for an accountant but will make it easier to find all the necessary information at the right time and enable you to keep all your financial information in one place.
There are a number of packages on the market, including: Freshbooks, QuickBooks, Sage and Xero.
2. Payroll management system
Managing payroll is time consuming and prone to mistakes, so investing in a payroll management system could save a lot of time and money.
Streamlining the payroll process will eliminate inefficiencies produced by manual systems and when choosing a payroll package, it helps to look for one that can report to HMRC in real time (RTI). Whenever an employee is paid, it is important to have software that records employee details, integrates the pension provider scheme, calculates pay and deductions and works out how much to pay to HMRC.
Some subscription-based payroll software includes: Freeagent, Xero, Quickbooks, Sage and Kashflow.
3. Cash flow analysis
The successful management of cash flow is essential for a company to stay in operation. Cash flow management software helps to manage past, present and future cash flows in and out of your business, helping you to maintain control of its financial health.
Trusting cash flow data enables better financial decisions and future plans to be made. With cash flow software you will have an accurate, up to date view of your cash flow situation and be able to see how much cash is flowing into and out of your business.
Software options include: Fluidily, Cube, Vena
4. E-commerce
An online store allows customers to shop and pay online and is fast becoming an essential requirement for a small to medium sized business.
However, unless you are extremely tech savvy it can be difficult to set up your business online. The solution is to use an all-in-one platform to include everything you need and these products allow you to set up your online shop in a user-friendly way.
There are many out there with some of the more popular ones including Shopify, Wix and EKM.
Novuna doesn’t recommend a particular supplier, it is advised that companies carry out their own independent research first.’
