Guess what, May 12th is National Limerick Day! In honor of the occasion, here is a limerick to brighten your day.

If it’s profits that make your heart sing,
Then a budget might just be your thing.
So make a plan of where to spend
Follow it and try not to bend
Then savings and profits you’ll bring.

Happy National Limerick Day!

Project tracking within your accounting software program is a great way to understand the cost of a project. It is fairly easy to set up and manage. Once set up, you track projects by attributing income and expenses to projects each time you enter them. Project tracking is not to be confused with ‘job costing’, which is a more complex function that includes the tracking of a job’s progress, timing, and other information; whereas project tracking deals mainly with the income and expense for a project. Here are the basics of project tracking, so you can decide if it’s the right thing for you to do for your business.

Setting up projects

If your accounting software includes the ability to track projects, you should be able to go into your setup options to create a new project and give it a name and/or an abbreviation. Make sure the name is easily recognizable, so it’s easy to identify during data entry. Keep in mind that you may actually have more than one project within a bigger project, so the name you give each project should reflect that. Otherwise, finding the right project can be confusing during data entry.

Assigning a project during transaction entry

Typically, once this is set up, a field within the transaction entry screen(s) will show you the projects you have available to choose from. Be sure to choose the correct project for that income or expense. If you forget to choose a project to associate with that transaction, most systems will let you edit the invoice afterward.

Getting reports by project

Most accounting systems will allow you to filter a variety of reports by project. Whether you are looking for a sales report, financial or general ledger report, use a filter within your report generation tool to include only the information that relates to your project. By filtering the reports this way, you won’t need to sort through loads of other information to get the information you are looking for.

When you are finished tracking a project and have all the information you need, many systems will allow you to mark that project inactive, keeping your list of projects to choose from accurate and easy to work with.

Once you set up and use project tracking, you might just be surprised how easy it is to keep track of even the smallest of projects. Keep in mind, that many systems also allow you to assign projects to your labor costs for a more accurate picture of complete project costs. Check your system today and give project tracking a try!

Sometimes we do something the same way for so long, that we don’t realize there is a much more efficient way to accomplish it. Even when we know there is something better, it’s hard to make the switch. Change can be hard. But if there is clearly a faster and more efficient way of getting your payroll done, you could save yourself wasted time and agony. Here are some of the top time wasters when it comes to payroll processing.

Double entry

If your employees are filling out a time sheet, and then you are taking that data and entering it by hand into a payroll software, you are double entering data. This not only wastes time, but leaves an additional margin for error. You can streamline that process by implementing an electronic time clock, where you pull in the hours electronically into your payroll system. Yes, there is an added expense for the time clock, but you will quickly recoup that expense with the time saved! You will wonder how you went so long without it.

Tracking employee leave time on a spreadsheet

A surprising number of people could use their payroll software to track employee leave time, but instead use a spreadsheet and manage the process manually. Maybe the thinking is that their leave calculations are too complex for software to compute or that the setup will take too long. Either way, it’s worth your time checking into whether your payroll software can handle your employee leave calculations. A good payroll system will be able to handle a variety of calculation methods and make the job of calculating leave a whole lot easier for you, and also maintain accuracy.

Troubleshooting problems on your own.

Yep, we are a payroll software company. So you might be thinking this is a plug for us, but it’s not. Far too many people think they can personally handle questions, problems and issues they are having with their payroll, when a payroll support team could easily help them resolve questions and issues much faster. So, no matter whose payroll software or service you are using, opt in for a support plan. Calling for help and getting your issue resolved right away will bring peace of mind, and may also stop the issue from snowballing and becoming worse!

Once you stop the payroll time wasters, payroll processing will go much more smoothly, and you can expect accuracy to be improved as well.

Learn why voiding checks is important within your accounting software, and also the general process for voiding checks.

A check should be voided if you still have the check in hand, and the check amount is incorrect, it was issued to the wrong vendor or bank, or the invoice should not have been paid. Once a check has been voided, a record of that transaction remains in the system. If you have already sent out the check, you should only void the check if they never received it, and you need to send a new one.

The void check function is used to cancel an existing payment transaction. If the check had been used to pay an invoice, then voiding that check will also reverse the payment for that invoice, returning it to an unpaid status. Once the open invoice has been restored, it will again display on the open invoices and vendor aging reports. If the original check was entered without applying it to open invoices, then the void process will also void the expense portion of the check.

If a check number had not previously been recorded, due to the check being destroyed before ever entering the system, you will have a gap in sequence numbers. If your business likes to account for all check numbers, it is good practice to record and void that check in your accounting software. That way you will not question the missing check number later on, as it will be accounted for within the system.

In most industries, and even non-business related activities, there are tools you can use to compare how you’re doing to some compilation of data from other similar ventures. While I believe comparative analysis is certainly something that should be considered, a more important measurement is how you are doing in your own world today and your individual trends over time.

I’ll share a few personal and business examples of average statistics that aren’t necessarily good numbers to shoot for. A golfer on the PGA tour usually puts a new ball in play every few holes of a golf tournament because he hits the ball with such power that he actually wears out the ball, while the average golfer should be able to play the same ball for at least a couple rounds. I, too, put a new ball in play every few holes, but it’s because I either hit something that scuffed it up, or it’s too deep in the woods or the pond to find. Don’t quote me on this because the facts may be a little fuzzy, but I once read an article that, on average, most serious private aircraft accidents happen when the pilot has around four hundred hours of flying experience. Of course, this is not a statistic that most pilots want to aspire to.

On the business side, there are industry measurements that a software company like Red Wing Software should spend about sixteen to eighteen percent of its budget on development. Again, that might be something worth measuring against, but we as a company need to look at our particular situation and determine if that is the right allocation for us. Another example would be comparing a particular business ratio against a specific industry benchmark. While that individual indicator might be way off, you should look at several indicators and determine if there is an anomaly in that one measurement and everything else is in line. It might be because of some significant difference in your particular business.

When doing business (or life) comparisons, make sure you look at all the facts that could affect the validity of the measurements, and make appropriate decisions. I personally prefer to look at trends and make certain they are headed in a positive direction. I’m down to about five new golf balls per eighteen-hole round.