Accounting - how do you handle it?

[jrockfl]

How do you handle all of your accounting?
Do you do it or do you have an accountant or company do it for you?

Specifically, charge backs, returns, exchanges, monthly expenses, etc.

I'm not an accountant and it takes up a lot of time. I'm just not sure how I would go about it without letting someone have access to everything. PayPal account, Auth.net Account...Online Banking, etc

[votrechien]

It's pretty easy to simplify things down to the bare basics. For example, PayPal payments don't need to be itemized line by line, fee by fee. When you make a withdraw of #*$!, record the #*$! as revenues. So if you make a weekly withdraw that's only one thing to record (and of course, don't use your PayPal account for anything personal or this won't work!). Again, as with returns, your you're likely simply refunding the person and it'll be recorded against ur PayPal withdraws.

As my company has gotten bigger my accounting is much more simple than it as 3 or 4 years ago and is very manageable with a hour or two a week.

[JackieBlue]

We do our own bookeeping but it is a good idea to have an account set up or review your chart of accounts. Also have an accountant do your business taxes. Payroll and other taxes are fairly easy to automate. This is all in the US though.

[Edge]

I run everything thru one bank account, credit card account - keep it simple. I can download a qif file (Quicken) to my computer and process automatically. With Quicken I can categorize business expenses and income then print out a report.

I do my estimated taxes every quarter and pay as required, however I let an experienced account do my annual taxes for a sanity check.

If you’re small, managing your own accounting is a good ideal as this keeps you sharp on expenses and revenue.

Not that hard…

[enigma1]

Since you're selling online why don't you use the shopping cart, store the order details there since the customers place orders in it and at the end of the year you have everything in one place. Plus you can automate it and customize it as much as you like.

[philbish]

Don't forget to consider proper accounting for inventory if you keep stock. You must expense the goods when you sell them, rather than when you buy them.