Accounting Software for Micro-Businesses – Dashboards (Part 3)

The accounting strategy we recommend for small, high-tech startups is to use naturally-generated information prepared by others during the year, as an accurate source of cash-basis accounting data.

This includes bank and credit card accounts, PayPal, and supplier accounts (e.g. BestBuy, Staples or Amazon) as the primary sources. Where possible purchase histories from suppliers (and sometimes PayPal) can provide purchase invoices.

This data can be summarized quickly using most industry-standard spreadsheet software using built-in pivot table capabilities, once a category column has been added to the spreadsheet.

Adjusting from cash-basis to accrual-basis is straightforward for any accountant, simply by examining transactions in the month (or two) following year-end.

Where possible, photograph purchase documents with a smartphone (or scanner) and store them appropriately. Alternatively, request invoices by email if they’re available.

FINANCIAL DASHBOARDS

Financial dashboards can be as simple as bookmarks on the bookmarks bar of your browser:

For most very small businesses, it doesn’t need to be more complicated than this. Of course, you’ll need some insights into your particular business to set up an appropriate set of bookmarks.

Accounting Software for Micro-Businesses (Part 2)

Marketing vs. Reality Gap While software vendors market management insights heavily to sell subscriptions, industry usage data shows a distinct gap between marketing and adoption:

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Built to Start AND to Scale

ABOUT

Launch – June 16th, 2023

The MAIN STREET JOURNAL was launched online in 2023, as a kind of Canadian, small business counterpoint to the venerable WALL STREET JOURNAL (WSJ), established in New York City in 1889.

Canada’s small businesses are smaller than most people think.

This is true for people that work in small businesses, for policymakers, business schools, and the business press. The self-employed and other small business owners don’t ‘get no respect’ and yet about 73% of private sector employment in Canada is made up of the 2.85 million self-employed individuals, and 1.3 million small employer businesses which average less than 7 employees.

We believe it’s time that these workers, and the small business owner-managers that employ them, got some respect. What’s more, we believe that business schools and policymakers should get out of their ivory towers and take a walk on Main Street!