Congratulations! You’ve finally decided to take the plunge, quit your soul-sucking 9 to 5 and start your own small business.
Whether your new business has been operating for one day or one year, you’ve probably noticed that along with the freedom, passion and excitement of self-employment comes a lot of challenges, many of which can be downright confusing.
Many small business owners start off by wearing a variety of different hats – not only are you the CEO, you’re also the marketing manager, CRM director, accountant, sales rep… the list goes on and on.
So how are you supposed to juggle things like tracking expenses and filing paperwork when you’re swamped with the day to day tasks of running a new business?
That’s where Shoeboxed comes in. Most small business owners aren’t born accountants – if they were, they’d be doing that instead of running a pet grooming company, or growing their life coaching business.
That’s why you should use Shoeboxed as your own virtual bookkeeper. Shoeboxed is a receipt scanning service that helps your small business go paperless, get organized, and enjoy flawless bookkeeping – even if (especially if!) math was your worst subject in school.
With Shoeboxed, you can instantly declutter your workspace using their nifty Magic Envelope. Simply toss all of your receipts, bank statements, business cards and expense reports into the prepaid envelope, toss the envelope in the mail, and watch as your account is magically populated with digitized data in a matter of days.
You can also scan documents right from your office, or while you’re on-the-go by using the Shoeboxed Receipt & Mileage Tracker for iPhone and Android. Or maybe you have a bunch of eReceipts in your email inbox. If that’s the case, forward them to your Shoeboxed email address at the same time you send them to your Insightly email address. Then you’ll have the receipt saved in your Shoeboxed account, as well as associated with your customer record in Insightly! This is a great option for busy small business owners who are constantly traveling or working outside the office.
Once the bulk of your clutter is cleared, maintain your newfound organization by snapping a photo of each receipt the second you get it. The totals – including expense category, amount, date and payment – will be automatically stored inside your Shoeboxed account.
Shoeboxed is especially handy come tax time, when you can get an instant snapshot of your spending by logging in to your account. Generate reports based on common tax write-offs, or create your own categories.
If you need to find a specific receipt, it’s easy to filter by date, keyword or amount. In just a couple clicks, you can then generate a report and share it with your tax professional.
New small business owners have enough to worry about without the headache of tracking every dollar spent and payment received. The time saved by using Shoeboxed not only allows you to focus on growing your customer base, it also gives you an overall financial snapshot of your business and shows you exactly where you could be saving more money.
Shoeboxed also scans and organizes your business cards into your secure online account, and from there you can send your contacts to dozens of programs (including Insightly!).
Use Shoeboxed to go paperless, get organized, increase your productivity and keep your finances updated in real time – all of which will let you get back to running your business. Which is why you started this thing in the first place, right?
Special Offer: Insightly users can sign up for any Shoeboxed Premium Plan and receive 30 days free, with an extra 10% off your first 6 months! Sign up here.
Questions? You can reach the Shoeboxed team at help@team.shoeboxed.com or on Twitter @Shoeboxed.
