A streamlined, no-stress relationship with your accountant is a surefire sign that your financial health is at an optimum level. Here are six easy ways to get your accountant or tax professional everything he or she needs to keep you on top of your finances.

1. Be Consistent

Make your accountant love you by keeping consistent track of your income and expenditures. The best way to do this is by creating a system that’s quick, easy, and works for your lifestyle.

It’s essential to keep track of everything you’re spending, especially if you’re a small business owner or solopreneur.

Set aside two minutes at the end of each day to track receipts, enter totals into your cloud-based accounting software, and get a snapshot of your overall financial picture. Spending a few minutes each day or as little as 15 minutes per week will prevent any unwelcome surprises at the end of the year.

2. Get Organized

ShoeboxedGetting and staying organized is crucial to keeping your accountant (and your pocketbook) happy. Cloud-based accounting software like Freshbooks does the organizing for you by automatically tracking your income and expenses.

By linking your various bank accounts to your accounting software, you’ll be able to instantly see where your money is going, as well as track and find individual expenses by category or date.

3. Know What to Track

Certain expenses should only be tracked for personal budgeting purposes, and not necessarily shared with your accountant. Most people aren’t able to write off groceries, and unless you’re in the fashion industry, those new Manolo Blahniks probably won’t count either. Spare your accountant the details of your shopping excursions by only sharing expenses that can be written off.

4. Create Reports

Your accountant will love you if you create one-click reports that have your personal income, business revenue and expenses itemized in an organized spreadsheet. Creating these reports only takes a second in your accounting software, and will save your accountant hours of time scouring your various records for accurate information.

5. Digitize Your Receipts

Don’t send your poor accountant envelope after envelope of crumpled paper receipts. Digitize your receipts with cloud based services that let you can create itemized reports based on receipt categories, dates and amounts.

Your accountant will be able to see all of the information from each individual receipt as well as your total expenditures from each tax category.

6. Find it Fast

Make your accountant love you by quickly accessing any receipts, bank statements or check stubs they have questions about. Once you’ve scanned and digitized all of your receipts, you’ll be able to easily search for and locate the record in question, instead of spending hours sifting through files and folders.

Making your accountant love you is as easy as signing up for the right organizational accounting software. With services that can scan receipts for you and organize every area of your finances, you have no excuse not to give you accountant everything they need to keep your finances picture-perfect.

Bio: This article was contributed by Mike Hourigan. Mike is the Marketing Manager for Shoeboxed.com, the fastest way to turn that pile of receipts into digital data.

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