We have found that many business clients here in San Diego appreciate the value of and invest the time to set up their point of sale systems, but give low priority to their accounting systems. Point of sale and accounting systems should smoothly dove tail one another, and the item lists in each (account entries, products, services, etc.) need to flow one to another. Point of sale systems can be quite complex, so that you can go back and clearly understand what you’ve sold, the status of inventories and when to reorder. If the item list in the point of sale system doesn’t match the item list in the accounting system, how do you reconcile the two? How do you know the status of inventory? In many cases it is simply a matter of not knowing how to set up the accounting system, or an inventory system within existing accounting systems such as Quickbooks.
There also are issues with sales tax and use tax. Some items are taxable, some are not. Some items may be integrated (and tax paid upon the acquisition of one ingredient used to make another “kit”). How do you ensure that you aren’t paying taxes twice for the same item, or that you are collecting and reporting the appropriate detail for sales tax and use tax. I have consistently see experienced professional and successful business people who undervalue their accounting systems and miss out on the opportunity to have a better vision into what is happening in the internals of their business and what decisions should be taken to increase productivity, profitability or both. Contact the experienced business, tax, accounting and legal professionals at Allen Barron for a free consultation at 866-631-3470. We will evaluate your business and accounting systems and help you to build the visibility into your business to take it to the next level.