Managing your Pet-Care Finances

Running a pet-care business is more than taking care of day-to-day operations. At the core of its success is the financial component: How you make money, spend money, and plan for the financial future of your company. Running a pet boarding business takes up so much time, so it makes sense that the financial part may easily take a back seat, especially if finance is not your forte. But you can easily make it a high priority, using tips and tools to make your life easier and your business healthier. Smart bookkeeping is vital for a successful business. Tracking your revenues, expenses and cash flow is essential, and these records will be required for tax purposes too. You cannot avoid bookkeeping as you will need this data anyway!

What To Track
Revenues and Expenses: How much is coming in; how much is going out. Every transaction should be recorded.

Cash: Documenting cash expenditures is more important than you may realize. Document cash expenses by keeping receipts or writing reimbursement cheques. You will be surprised at how much cash you spend on your business. If you are terrible at keeping receipts, start using a dedicated card for all business expenses, so you can use the monthly statement for your purchases.

Invoicing: Yes, this is part of your revenues, but invoicing can have a life all its own! If your invoices are not paid at the point of sale, you may need to track Accounts Receivable too. This should be something that is monitored closely and invoicing needs to be an active part of your daily business model. 

Accounts Payable: If you are running a legit business, (and of course you are!) you probably have some business debt or at least recurring payments to vendors and suppliers. It is important to keep track of these payments.

Employees: Payroll, taxes, withholdings, worker's compensation. Yep, even with one employee, these are things you must understand and have integrated into your financial plan.

Make Life Easy: Helpful Tips and Tools

• Saving time—the software does the calculations for you.
• Saving money—saving time saves money, yes, but using good software can prevent accounting errors, save money and avoid penalties at tax time.
• Access to online accounting any time from anywhere, using the cloud.

Think about the kind of features that will truly enhance your workday. You want everything in one designated place, not a paper folder here, and a computer file there, with notes, invoices and receipts all over the place. You want everything in one application, integrated together, so when you make updates to your inventory or sales, for example, it reflects these updates in all ledgers and reports. 

Automate Reconciliation with Your Bank Statements

Connecting your online accounting software to your bank account creates tremendous efficiencies when taking care of your business finances. The software can automatically import bank and credit card transactions every day. Customize rules, create invoices and purchase orders, and use cash coding and sorting to reconcile large bulk transactions quickly. Xero and Quickbooks both support this feature.

Integrate EPOS to Take Payments
If your pet boarding business takes payments, (which hopefully it does!) why not take them electronically, right at the point of sale? Integrating EPOS (electronic point of sale) will be that tweak that makes everyone happy; employees, customers, and You. Third-party EPOS can sync to your accounting software, making taking payments, controlling inventory and tracking sales and revenue a breeze. Check out: Square, Rev Pets Payments and Stripe.

Scan and Digitize Receipts

Did you know that you can upload your receipts and invoices to your cloud accounting software with a mobile app? Integrating an app like Xpenditure or Receipt Bank can easily minimize the paper in your office. It scans the receipt and extracts all relevant data. You can add important details such as project or category, so everything is neatly categorized and accessible. Xero is a great example of online accounting software, with all of the features we mentioned above.

Look at the Bottom Line

Using online accounting software will certainly allow you to create all kinds of efficiencies with your pet boarding business. In addition to saving time, you will be impressing customers, making vendors happy and making tax time easier. Now that you're in the groove, what other changes can you make to boost your bottom line? Profits and pricing have a direct correlation. How much should you charge for pet boarding? How do your rates compare to your competitors? Do your rates vary for the type of pet or type of stay?

The Takeaway?

Happier pets and human customers, because you have more time to focus on them. Happier business owner, because your finance department is under control.