Looking for an opportunity to add value to your small business customers? Interested in expanding your services? We’re pleased to announce a strategic alliance with Key Business Solutions, one of SAP Business One partners. SAP Business One is a world-class innovator in the accounting software space to add to our list of preferred suppliers to our professional bookkeepers and bookkeeping business owners.

We feature two SAAS applications to demonstrate the potential for you to work with our industry partners to deliver cost-saving solutions to your SMB customers; one featuring SAP Business One; the other demonstrating the value of paperless time sheets. Because software-as-a-service (SaaS) and the cloud reduce capital expenditure on computing infrastructure cost and maintenance requirements, SMBs are viewing technology investments with less trepidation.

Real-time decision-making is here now

A small retailer, for instance, that can monitor its inventory on the fly and perform real-time cost analysis, will be able to make decisions and take actions to avoid stock-outs or over-stocks and to optimise profits and losses. A particular concern is cash flow, which must be preserved at all costs. What SMBs do today affects their financial statements tomorrow; there is no buffer.

Armed with a full view of all the relevant data, a business owner can be proactive. If a business knows its cost of materials is going to rise in six months, for example, it can phase in small price increases to avoid a large increase all at once. With data and analytics, you can view trends and historical data and extrapolate to the future. This is crucial for a SMB which depends on the ability to respond to events as they unfold and even take action in anticipation of what lies ahead.

In other words, SMBs need to do business “in the moment.” From the bookkeeper’s perspective, SAP Business One provides a simple tool that captures and reports on performance of their client’s business while processing daily transactions. Bookkeepers can use this to provide a value-add to their customers by adding analytical as well as compliance reporting. With SAP Business One, bookkeepers have access to the cash flow reporting feature, again adding value for their customers by providing clear visibility of their working capital. (For more information)

The problem with time sheets

A Melbourne-based bookkeeper had a client in a light industrial business with an entirely mobile workforce (no office location); they needed an easy integration with QBO that could accurately capture their labour hours for job costing. The bookkeeper knew a solution would need to be easy to use, cost effective, and have a QBO integration for fast and seamless data syncing.

TSheets, a mobile, GPS time tracker for labour costing and payroll, is a cost effective solution, providing accurate labour costing as well as other features the client could benefit from as well.

The business owner enjoys the ability to see the job and GPS location of where his employees were working — at any time — directly from his mobile device. With all nine employees in the field and no office location, using TSheets mobile apps and features such as the Who’s Working Window was just the mobile solution he needed. For the bookkeeper in this case there is direct value: an improvement in the business’ bottom line; an effective value-add service.

Key Business Solutions is an SAP Partner which specialises in working with Bookkeepers and their customers to implement and adapt SAP Business One to their unique needs. Details and brochure: www.keybusinesssolutions.com.au/bookkeepers-hub-sap

T-Sheets are a preferred supplier and Alliance partner with Bookkeepers Hub. Find out the benefits for you here