Invoicing and bookkeeping

UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS OWNER AND FLEET OPERATORS FORUM (INTERACTIVE)
1

Just spending a bit of time over the holidays to devise a invoicing and bookkeeping system for my new business.

I’ve used excel for years to keep track of my personal finances and have been experimenting with merging documents and think that in theory what I’m attempting should be possible with word and excel.

I will be working for up to 4 customers a week and want a system where I can input the hours to each customer at the agreed rate then add stone and tips as necessary. Then merge this document to generate invoices.

Then I want to merge the information into a cash flow forecast document and a bank balance document along with a document for my accountant for sales and outgoings for vat.

I’m not apposed to buying a system if one gets recommended that will suit my purpose but everything I see on line seems not fit for purpose.

Any thoughts?

2

I use Excel but don’t do anything like as complicated as what you are suggesting.

I have a main folder with all my business stuff in and then just a series of folders within such as;

  • Fuel
  • Maintenance
  • Bank (a forecast of future incomings/outgoings)
  • Main Customer 1
  • Main Customer 2
  • Other work
  • VAT
  • Daily Overview

etc.
I’m lucky in one way as my two largest customers automatically generate my invoices. However, for all my other customers I just manually transfer the data from Excel onto a Word-based invoice form. It works ok for me and with only one truck I don’t really think you need a more complex or expensive system.