I have started using Saasu Account Software to organize my finances and so far I have found it very easy to use
There are very good training videos on the Saasu Site so even if you are not an accountant you will be able to set up your Balance Sheet and Income Statement very easily
I followed the following steps to set up my system
There is a the bank feed function in Saasu – (Xero accounting software has the same function available) in which you can download your bank account information into the accounting system
Once you have established the bank feeds( I did it for last 3 months) for my personal cheque account, credit card and my business cheque account( not trading through a company yet) I then posted each transaction to either expense( e.g. interest, entertainment etc. ) income( e.g. salary or rent income),liability or asset category
I also created rules for recurring transactions so that when a transaction occurred month after month e.g. debit order for Water account – these transactions would automatically post to the correct account without me having to code it again
I then printed out my current balances from my bank and put through a journal entry to reconcile to my balances on Saasu accounting software- this was to reconcile my opening balances before the 3 month download so that going forward my balances in the accounting system now agrees with my balances in the banking system.
I now had a balance sheet and income statement which reflected my current position and trade history for 3 months and with my bank feeds which occurred each day – I simply update any transactions that are new
For my mortgage I passed a journal entry which debited the asset and credited the mortgage loan with the bank- if you have paid down you mortgage the simply debit the asset and credit your equity account to reflect this asset on your balance sheet
In order to reflect any other balances on your balance sheet – simply debit the asset and credit your equity account as this is what you want to build – so for example your retirement account you can update on a monthly basis by debiting the asset and calling it Retirement Fund and crediting your equity
The next thing I will be doing going forward is inserting my budget using some of the past information in my Income Statement to create the budget -at least I have information in my accounting system which is real- now I can start the budget process and fine tune and highlight areas which need improvement
Lessons for your kids
I showed my kids what an accounting system does in that it automates the Balance Sheet and Income Statement – instead of doing a spread sheet which is time consuming – if you can automate your financial system it will be easier to manage – teach them to use technology