How to be efficient in booking keeping

21^st century is called the ‘Information Age’. Be it your friend, any company functioning miles away or your daily work routine, everything today is Just a Click Away. A working individual constantly jostles between different work frames. Think about all the times when you could have used your pace to make more money instead of keeping track of what you already had done, over and over again. To your rescue, cash management services have introduced a series of solutions which not only reduce your mundane work but also help you do it efficiently.

What is Book-Keeping?

Book-keeping is a process of recording all the financial transactions ranging from purchase, sales, incomes and overheads. Book-Keeping can be done by an individual, company, corporation or organisation.

This process systematically divides each financial transaction, cash or credit, into separate ledgers which help the book-keeper quickly analyse real-time position of the company and take necessary actions. Here’s a list of some reasons which will compel you to perform book-keeping tasks:

• Financial Insights – Book-keeping helps you keep a record of all the transactions which happen in your company, thus giving you a gist of all the financial activities your company performed in a particular financial year. Using this consolidated data, one can get financial insights like annual turnover, profit percentage, growth rate of a company, payroll and much more.
  
• Saves Time – Digital book-keeping process saves a lot of time as data entry is to be made at one place and can be revisited again and again. Calculations and analysis to be done on these digitized books do not take as much time as it would have if they were being done in the traditional ways.
  
• Penalties – Book-keeping efficiently takes care of payroll management, payment of dividends and interests and maintains accuracy of computation, saving the client from incurring extra penalty costs.
  
• Higher Efficiency – Digitalisation of the book-keeping system helps in making complex calculations and analysis and generation of reports easy and in a more accurate manner. There is no scope for human error as far as the functioning of book-keeping is concerned, thus increasing a firm’s efficiency.

Cash Management Services – The Bigger Picture

Cash Management Service is a key function performed by Kotak for its clients, enabling them to create efficient working capital cycle and make best use of their liquid resources at a lower cost. In India, a cash manager’s responsibilities include the following:

• Provide book-keeping services on daily basis
• Manage cash inflow and outflow effectively on a daily basis.
• Bulk collection of cheques as well as post-dated cheque management service.
• Cheque purchase facility.
• Digital Solutions for customized multiple electronic payments.
• Develop strategies to optimize cash position of the company.
• Forecast daily cash position and future cash requirements through past performances.
• Study cash flow mechanism of the company and prepare monthly variance reports.
• Evaluate investment options and risk factors before investing surplus funds.
• Execute cash collections, fund transfers, month-end activities, cash disbursements.
• Update accounting database for daily financial transactions.
• Maintain a backup for all the financial data.
• Resolve any issues related to foreign currency exchange.
• Develop financial reports to assist management in making appropriate decisions.
• Maintain security and confidentiality of financial records.
• Provide professional knowledge on cash management processes and techniques.

In order to successfully achieve the above integrated collection, payments, liquidity management and escrow solution needs, the first step required is incorporating a high performance book-keeping process. If the first step is taken effectively, the rest of the journey becomes very smooth and accuracy is maintained thereafter.

Tips to increase Book-Keeping efficiency
In order to have an efficient, updated and accurate record of the company’s transactions, below are 7 tips to increase book-keeping efficiency that must be carried out:

• Invest in Technology – Invest in latest book-keeping software. These software will make it easy for you to be accurate and access up to date financial information from any electronic device anywhere in the world. Cloud computing is the latest technology which has emerged as a market leader lately.
  
• Make it a habit – Assign a certain number of hours every day or week to book-keeping. This is important so that one doesn’t miss out noting any major expense or income, or avoid any payment or receipts.
  
• Keep up with compliance and obligation – Efficient book-keeping will allow you to procure financial foresights. This will enable you to get a clearer picture of future compliances and obligations for which you can make a provision and keep money aside beforehand.
  
• Track your Expenses – Tracking of expenses helps one to keep a tight hold on unnecessary spends as well as pay off periodic expenses on time leveraging additional discounts.
  
• Track your Invoices – Tracking invoices on time will help you collect timely payments from your debtors who may otherwise require a second reminder and penalties may also need to be levied. This may also reduce chances of bad debt.
  
• Don’t depend on a single person – Do not depend on a single person for book-keeping. In absence of this person your book-keeping may go for a toss. Also, unethical practices of any book-keeper may put you into trouble incurring heavy losses.
  
• Hire a Professional – As your financial practices expand, it becomes more and more difficult to concentrate on both book-keeping as well as managing day to day business processes. Overburden of work may lead to book-keeping mistakes or you may lag behind in entering your financial transactions. The entire purpose of book-keeping may go for a toss. In order to avoid such circumstances, it is better to hire a professional for a small fee and avoid huge losses or penalties in future.

The banking network has reached far and beyond deposits and lending. Today, all your routine as well as complex book-keeping work is well taken care of by a well-structured mechanism and a person is dedicated only for this work. The demand for cash management services (CMS) have led to the emergence of a total new wing of employees who are dedicated to different CMS activities of which book-keeping is the most important area. So, all you need to do is connect to experts who have their best interest in your growth.