Nowadays software is designed with the intention of making your life easier (yes I know that a lot of the time it doesn’t!!). For your business there are a number of programmes and apps that you can use that will definitely help to remove your financial headache. Let’s start at the beginning.

With the introduction of MTD for sole traders coming soon, eventually everyone will need to use some form of software for their accounts. There are a number of different options out there but my personal favourite, and the only one I use with my clients, is Xero. It’s simple to use, you can link your bank accounts directly to it to feed in your transactions and most subscriptions come with Hubdoc for free. Ah but what is Hubdoc I hear you ask? Well let me enlighten you young padawan. Hubdoc is an app that you can upload your receipts to, either via a photograph from your phone or an email sent directly. You can also link some accounts to it so it will fetch receipts automatically. Talk about a time saver!

Next up for you online sellers is an app called Greenback. This clever piece of technology links your stores such as Etsy, Amazon, eBay etc to Xero. It fetches your sales and fees data for you and you tell it where to send it to in Xero. The best bit of this is that they have a free version you can use! The major bonus of the paid version though is the bulk export button. One click and all your sales and fees are sent through to Xero whilst you sit back with a cup of tea (other hot drinks are available).

Hopefully those three programmes will help you in both increasing the accuracy of your finances and making your life just a little bit easier!

For the nosey amongst you that want to know what other pieces of software I use for my clients, the first is called Xavier and is what I refer to as someone who looks over my shoulder. This brilliant piece of technology checks over everything you put into Xero to make sure you haven’t accidentally put something in the wrong category or used the wrong VAT code. It also does some nifty reports and predicts your vat and corporation tax due. Another one I use is SmartVault. This is where you can store important documents securely such as VAT returns or your sales data. With their bank level security it’s much safer than just having it in the cloud for example.

One final personal piece of software that I’ve recently discovered and fallen in love with is Asana. I’m a big fan of to-do lists in general but Asana just makes them that little bit more special! You can put things into different categories, set due dates and have them repeating for monthly tasks, and by far the best bit of all, when you finish a task, prepare yourself for this now, set down your tea, make sure you’re sitting comfortably…… a flying animal with a rainbow shooting out of its butt goes across your screen in celebration! I know right!?