You need to understand direct vs. indirect cash flow forecasting to make short and long-term business decisions. This article will show you how.
Business Finance Management
In the fast-paced startup world, agility is everything.
While larger, more established companies may have the luxury of making mistakes, small businesses and startups need to make quick, smart decisions to achieve the lean growth required for success.
To make well-informed decisions, you need accurate, up-to-the-moment information—that's where real time bookkeeping and accounting comes in.
Real time bookkeeping hinges on two technological advancements: artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing.
Utilized properly, AI can allow your business to automate the recording of transactions, automatically entering them as soon as they occur, rather than days or weeks later.
Cloud computing allows you to store your company's books on a remote server accessible via the internet rather than a hard drive in your office.
Combining these two technologies with real time bookkeeping, you'll be able to view your financial information anytime, from anywhere, and it will always be up to date with the latest transactions.
While the words bookkeeping and accounting are often used interchangeably—and bookkeepers and accountants do sometimes perform the same tasks—the two are not the same.
Bookkeeping is concerned with recording transactions and gathering the financial information necessary to run your business. With real time bookkeeping software utilizing cloud computing and AI, much of the work that a human bookkeeper would traditionally do, such as generating an income statement, balance sheets, or sales reports, can now be automated.
Accounting, on the other hand, is concerned with reviewing and analyzing the financial statements a bookkeeper generates to check for errors and gain actionable insights from the information. Since these goals are more subjective, many business accounting needs require human expertise.
With all that in mind, real time accounting usually refers to human experts reviewing the books generated by real time bookkeeping software on a daily basis. Though it's not literally real time accounting software in the same sense as real time bookkeeping, real time accounting means you'll have a professional accountant reviewing your books and providing customer support on a daily—rather than monthly or even less frequent—basis.
The advantages of online accounting software that provide real time bookkeeping over traditional, after-the-fact bookkeeping are numerous, but here are five of the most important:
Zeni is a full-service finance firm built around its cutting-edge real time bookkeeping software. The Zeni Dashboard gives customers 24/7 access to highly accurate, real-time financial reporting and insights all on a single platform at no additional charge.
Alongside our real time bookkeeping software, our experienced finance team of accountants, tax advisors, CPAs, and CFOs gives startups the finance management services and peace of mind they need to succeed.
Zeni Inc.
420 Florence St, Suite 300
Palo Alto, CA 94301
Office: +1 (510) 858-6558
Write UsEmail: hello@zeni.ai