Businesses and Bookkeeping

Who Starts a Small Business?

Today’s entrepreneurs represent backgrounds and interests more diverse than ever before, and their motivations for starting their own business are as creative and varied as the products and services they offer. Some entrepreneurs are inspired by an individual passion and want to turn a hobby into a career; some see an insufficiency in the market as an opportunity; some simply want the freedom to be the boss. And of course, the recent pandemic—with all its accompanying workplace obstacles—has become another major catalyst in prompting workers to start their own small businesses.

Can I Start a Successful Small Business if I Don’t Like Bookkeeping?

No matter the type of business, initial inspiration, or style of management, accurate bookkeeping is an essential ingredient for any company that wants to find financial growth and lasting success. Unfortunately, it can also be immensely time-consuming and an unexpected drain on a new business owner’s energy and resources.

Small business owners surveyed over the last several years consistently report that financial and accounting tasks, including bookkeeping, payroll, and tax preparation, take up the majority of their company’s administrative time and resources. Many small businesses—especially new ones—don’t always have the resources to invest in hiring a dedicated bookkeeper. Technology can help out here, and for a fraction of the cost.

The Entrepreneur with a Passion

A creative and entrepreneurial mind can allow a person to take his or her passion for something—cooking, travel, technology, art, writing, personal wellness—and build a thriving financial venture around it. But unless that passion is specifically for bookkeeping, many small business owners soon find themselves burdened by demands of everyday record-keeping. Time spent managing finances, paying employees and vendors, and balancing books is time diverted away from developing and marketing the product.

Technology that helps business owners streamline their daily or monthly bookkeeping allows the entire business to run more efficiently. It also leads to far fewer errors. When businesses take advantage of applications that import payroll data, print and mail checks for the business, and store all related data securely, owners can rest easy that payments to employees, creditors, and suppliers are timely and correct. They can spend time and energy on the products that inspired them to begin with.

The Entrepreneur Who Sees a Need

The well-known saying that “necessity is the mother of invention” has always been true in American business. How many companies have been born from one person’s frustration with the marketplace’s glaring lack of a needed service? How many businesses have started because someone recognized that a client need was going unmet, improvement was long overdue, or that marketplace options were inefficient, outdated, or poor quality?

Sometimes that initial need may originate with the entrepreneur herself. Over the past year, thousands of displaced or discontent workers have been prompted to go to work for themselves, thanks to the unprecedented workplace challenges and restrictions brought on by the pandemic.  A June article from Forbes explains: “In a matter of months, COVID-19 Destroyed Jobs on a scale not seen since the great depression. Millions of Americans have since started companies out of need—and opportunity.”  <https://www.forbes.com/sites/maneetahuja/2021/06/17/covids-entrepreneur-explosion/?sh=8c3eaee4de78>

Those who started their business as a result of the pandemic likely did so very quickly and may not have the experience or expertise to deal with the daily records in an efficient and time-effective way. Software that streamlines the business’s financial processes is essential, especially as the business starts to grow and time must be spent developing and maintaining a client base and getting the word out.

The Entrepreneur Who Wants Workplace Freedom

Fatigued by the constraints of traditional workplace demands, more and more independent-minded people are taking on the immense challenge of working for themselves. People who embark on such an adventure are often experts in a specific field who want to offer their services directly to clients--on their own time and in their own way.

Those who have discovered the newfound freedom of being their own boss are people who place high value on their time; they certainly do not want to—and perhaps cannot afford to—spend hours of their week on business bookkeeping.  Automating financial transactions only takes a small amount of time in the beginning, but it pays for itself over and over in time saved and errors reduced.

As the market evolves to accommodate all the new products and advancements, technology to support small businesses does as well. The advent of online accounting software has led to a streamlining of financial transactions for even the smallest of companies. Checkeeper, whose check printing software Investopedia named “Best for Small Business” in 2021, works compatibly with all the top accounting applications and takes the expense and hassle out of setting up a check-printing system.

<https://www.investopedia.com/best-check-printing-software-5025098>