Undoubtedly the scariest aspect of running a business is being financially responsible and answerable to the many stakeholders involved.

It is difficult building a product, taking care of customer service, sales and inventory management. Add to that the burden of making sure you and your startup are always putting funds to their best use, and many would join us in saying “No, thank you.”

Most entrepreneurs hire people who get finance and hope for the best. In our minds, going through the financial health of a company at any given point in time might seem like this

But we have here a few shortcuts that present a much better way for finance teams and management to keep a tab on all that’s going on in the company - fiscally speaking. 

1. Process payroll every month-end with o/payroll 
   

Come month-end and you would find all accounting teams preparing themselves for payroll processing. It is complicated and time-consuming with a high margin for error. 

We figured that regardless of how big or small your workplace might be, the best way to ensure seamless payroll is to automate it.

Automated payroll software does away with all the challenges of using spreadsheets or outsourcing the process. There are many payroll automation tools and software available in the market which can reduce manual efforts and increase efficiency. 

Apart from carrying out payroll computations, the software you select should also be updated with the latest compliance laws based on your country. 

Once you select the software that works best for you, create a shortcut o/payroll so that the entire finance team can know where the magic happens. 

2. Track your monthly revenue with o/revenue

There is little purpose to business than making revenue for every stakeholder. 

This is one metric that should be quickly accessible at any given time. Finance teams and the upper management must have a quick way to know the breakdown of revenue whenever they want. 

A great way of putting this in place would be to use o/revenue that redirects the user to an excel file that tracks down revenue data. This would include the name of the users, their subscription plan, accounts receivable, etc. 

3. Send an invoice immediately with o/invoice

A delay in raising an invoice can be surprisingly detrimental to the finances of the company. 

To prevent wasting time in sending invoices to those who owe you money, make sure to use a software/app that quickly allows you to create one. 

At OSlash, we use the shortcut o/invoice that takes us to create invoices in QuickBooks. If it’s a recurring invoice, the customer name pre-populates the email ID, billing address, and other details, allowing you to send it out immediately. 

4. Check out which requests to reimburse with o/reimbursements

There are many business expenditures that your employees may request you to refund. Instead of following up with each team’s manager over emails and phone calls, it is much better to have a centralized platform for making and viewing the requests for reimbursements. 

Creating o/reimbursement for all the employees which can redirect them to the payroll application’s page for reimbursement is one way to reduce the unnecessary back & forth. It is easy to fill in the details there and upload the invoice. 

A shortcut o/reimbursement-requests can be created to view all the requests on the reimbursement dashboard page of the said payroll application. 

5. Create a sales forecast that scales with o/monthly-forecast

The sales forecast is the single most important number in the company. It enables revenue teams to prioritize actions that the organization will need to execute to reach its desired goal. 

Decision-makers rely on the forecast to determine how and when to fuel growth. It helps them map out which areas to invest in. 

We understand that it’s really hard to get it right. Forecasting sales with the right model and sales forecasting method is vital to the success of any given company, small business, or multinational enterprise.

Here are the steps you can follow to establish your forecast: 

i. Outline the goals of your forecasting exercise

ii. Understand your average sales cycle

iii. Make all the definitions used in the forecasting exercise consistent across the organization 

iv. Deep dive into the historical data and critical sales forecasting metrics and see if there are some exceptional items that may have skewed the data in hand

v. Establish seasonality and big market events to forecast sales

vi. Determine your sales forecast maturity. This includes figuring out answers to questions such as: How do you calculate sales forecast? What is a sales forecast example? What are the methods of sales forecasting? What are the best sales forecasting methods?

With a shortcut o/monthly-forecast or o/annual-forecast, you won’t need to share links for different months, quarters, or years with the decision-makers in the workplace. 

6. Keep a tab on all company transactions with o/banking

With advanced accounting/business banking software, you can connect your banks and credit cards. The software would render on a daily basis a list of all the transactions that have gone through. 

You can also select an expense category for each of the transactions and add it there itself. The banking feature in many of the accounting tools is incredibly powerful. It allows you to enter new transactions and match them with existing ones. 

We use the shortcut o/banking to go to the Banking tab of QuickBooks and get an overview for the day. 

7. Revisit the marketing budget with o/marketing-budget-allocation

With multiple acquisition channels now open to marketers, it is important that finance folks check the ROI from each investment to revise marketing budgets frequently. 

If you have the right tracking tools in place, it is easy to get the data and figure out how different channels are performing in acquiring customers. And to which channels should more spending budget be allocated. 

At OSlash, we use Looker to go through the data and efficiently allocate our (limited) resources.  

8. See the financial health of your organization over a period of time with o/financial-reports

The shortcut o/financial-report is perhaps the most used shortcut for the finance team of any company. 

With so many features that have been built into accounting tools, it’s easy to pull reports such as income statements, balance sheets, management reports etc. by customizable report periods. 

9. Have your investor details handy with o/cap-table

A capitalization table (or “cap table”) is a list of all the securities your company has issued and the people and entities who own them.

They usually include a list of names or groups (founders, investors, employees, common stockholders etc.) and details related to the type of securities they own, how much, when they invested, at what percentage of the company, etc. 

For a cap table especially, it’s of utmost importance that there be a single source of truth, not multiple versions of the same floating around. For instance, if an employee exercises options and the version with the legal team or investors doesn’t get updated, mistakes might compound and make things complicated in the future. 

At OSlash, we use o/cap-table to have one source of truth for investment-related matters to ensure everyone is on the same page. 

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