Let me start with a simple statement: Bookkeeping is NOT one of my favorites. I personally don’t need it. With bookkeeping I just work for the tax collector, the financial institutes, and my shareholders and so on. Do I really need it for my business?

Yes, unfortunately, I do. I need all these figures and numbers to know where my business actually stands. I need to track invoices and bills. But do I need all the effort related with bookkeeping like keying in invoices and bills, gather customer information, sending estimates and purchase orders? In my opinion lots of work in this area can easily be avoided – with automation.  So, we start with a look to the information flow related to bookkeeping.

 1.      The usual way.

You do some work for a customer either service work to you sell products. Usually you create an estimate and deliver it to the customer. After some negotiations to will receive a purchase order.  After doing the work you create an invoice, send it and hopefully receive payment. Later on you send a statement o the customer about its account status. 

How can we automate this information flow?

The first challenge is to avoid the paper flow. Creating the estimate is a creative task. So don’t try to automate it. But sending it can be done by email. Almost everybody in business has access to email today. This is a first small step to avoid costly work. When you receive the purchase order, your customer also can deliver it by email. If this is the case, evaluate it and just import it into QuickBooks. That easy.

Now the work has to be done. Do your employees really fill in paper forms to track their billable hours? Use a small application or the internet to add them directly into your accounting system. After finishing the work, you create the invoice and – as expected – send it by email to the customer. The same happens with the statement.

Any pitfalls? Not as I know. You can request email delivery receipts, so that you get informed when the email was delivered. You can encrypt the email for security reasons.

2.      Another case.

You have an Internet business and you sell goods via the internet.  So customers do visit your website, and enter information into a web form. This information is send to the payment provider, authorized and you deliver the goods. At the same time you will receive an email by the payment provider that gives you u all the information necessary for you accounting system. It contains the customer including its address, the goods purchased, the price and some more.

How to automate?

You can import the payment provider’s email into QuickBooks by automatically creating the customer – if not already there - and issuing a sales receipt. The sales receipt is then send by email to the customer. This means, practically no manual work just supervision.

3.      The other side

Let us assume to switch the sides. Now you need something from a vendor. You ask them for an estimate. You receive it, hopefully by email. You make a decision and issue a purchase order. Send it, receive the goods. Unfortunately some time later you will receive the bill and have to pay it.

Even here automation can take place. The biggest benefit comes with the email delivery process. The estimate you receive can be converted into a purchase order in QuickBooks. This can then send to the vendor by email.  Based on the purchase order (see our first case) the vendor emails you the bill which you can import into the accounting system.