As the owner of an SME (Small and Medium Enterprise), both you and the employees that work for you probably wear many hats.  It’s a good chance that there are several jobs you do that would normally be split up amongst a couple of handfuls of people.  That notwithstanding, one of the most important jobs you do is keeping track of your finances.  Being able to handle the business end of running a business is much harder than selling products.  There are so many moving parts that it’s sometimes hard to keep track of them all.  Small business owners must stay in control of their finances if they want their business to prosper.

The first thing to do to make it easy to keep track of finances is to get quality bookkeeping software.  If you’re not an accountant yourself, you’ll be keeping track of your own books on your own until you have the means to afford one.  So, buying software that is reputable, regularly updated, and accurate is vital.  A missed digit here or adding when subtraction is needed there could result in an unpleasant audit, and who wants that?  Good bookkeeping software makes this otherwise unpleasant part of running a business easier.
If you do have the means, however, hire a good accountant.  Accountants cost money—especially if you want to hire one to be on your staff full time—but an accurate accountant saves paperwork, time, and most importantly money.  Your accountant might save you more than you pay him to work for you, which means your accountant will pay for himself very quickly.  If you can’t quite afford to hire a full-time accountant, bringing one in to give your books a good once-over every few months or so is the next best thing.

The best thing about owning a small business is being able to do what you enjoy doing and get paid for it; however, one of the downsides of running a business is actually running the business, and that means handling the finances.  Keeping track of where the money’s going and where it’s coming from is the most important thing to remember, and owning good bookkeeping software is a start.  At some point down the line though, you may want to invest in hiring an accountant to periodically look at your books, or consider hiring one full time if you can afford it.