What is a consulting business?
A consulting business is best defined as “a company that provides professional advice and analysis to customers.” Consulting businesses can come in all shapes and sizes, but all consulting businesses will need to purchase some sort of accounting software. This becomes crucial because most consulting firms require their clients to sign extensive contracts that outline the scope of their work. These documents need to be recorded accurately so if things go awry, it can be proven who was at fault.
It’s a business which provides advice and expertise to other organizations. A consultation could be short term or long term. In either case, you need accounting software that accurately tracks your time spent on each project, as well as the costs incurred.
What 5 key Accounting Software for Consultants features should I look for?
Accounts payable:
Enables you to keep track of what you owe and also pay all your bills on time. The feature helps you process your outgoing funds, track invoices, store vendor details, and print checks.
Accounts receivable:
Helps you effectively manage your incoming payments. The feature offers billing codes for easy handling of recurring outgoing invoices to customers and payment codes for efficient crediting of payments from multiple accounts at one time.
General ledger:
Allows users to maintain a comprehensive record of all financial transactions and track spending by the project. The feature simplifies budgeting and reporting by showing past and future transactions from specific accounts within a specified date range.
Billing and invoicing:
Gives users the ability to track transactional financial data and create billing and invoicing documentation for clients.
Customer relationship management (CRM):
CRM applications help consultants manage interactions with current and prospective customers, clients, and/or partners, with the goal of increasing customers, revenue, and customer satisfaction.
SAP Concur
Concur is a cloud-based expense and travel management software solution that enables executives to manage travel expenses. It allows finance executives to monitor expenses and cash flows related to travel expenditures. Concur’s travel and expenses feature assists with travel processes, from booking to approval to payment. In addition, the software automates data capture from receipt images and submits expense reports for approvals. Concur’s invoice automates accounts payable processes by utilizing templates and predefined reports. The system can also customize workflows and automate vendor payments. Concur’s intelligence feature enables employees to create customized dashboards, providing a summary of multiple reports that enable finance managers to track travel expenses. Concur also shares automated alerts with the finance team and provides reports and dashboards. Support is offered via phone. Users can even refer to online FAQs for basic inquiries.
What is SAP Concur?
SAP Concur is a cloud-based travel and expense management solution that automates invoicing and expense reports and manages travel programs in one platform.
How do I use SAP Concur?
For expense management, employees can log in to the SAP Concur mobile app or website to upload receipts and add work-related expenses. Expense reports are generated automatically and sent to their manager’s account for approval. For AP management, vendor invoices can be tracked, reviewed, and approved across departments in real-time.
Who uses SAP Concur?
SAP Concur is used by small businesses to large enterprises to manage travel programs, expenses, and invoices in one platform.
PayPal
PayPal is a digital payment platform that enables businesses and individuals to pay and accept payments through an online portal without revealing any financial details. The solution is suitable for businesses of all sizes. PayPal provides a one-touch login process, so there is no need to re-enter information. For individuals, users can shop as well as process transactions overseas by linking their card details through PayPal’s portal.
For business owners, users can accept international payments from banks or digital wallets through the portal. They can bill the clients, receive direct payments from suppliers or manufacturers and accept payments from more than 200 markets with a single account. PayPal charges a transaction fee, which is calculated based on businesses’ total sales volumes. The system is compatible with mobile devices.
UpKeep
UpKeep’s CMMS is a modern maintenance and asset management solution for your team. From your desktop to your phone and even your tablet, UpKeep is easily accessible from anywhere at any time. Create work orders on the go, get notifications when tasks are updated, and receive alerts straight from your app when assets go down making your business run more efficiently than ever before.
UpKeep offers core maintenance functionality, such as asset, inventory, and work order management, and preventive maintenance to create service schedules. Users can see a tasks overview page showing upcoming work along with due dates, criticality, and assets or workers assigned to each. When adding new tasks, users can include notes, a color-coded priority rating, images, assets, and users.
The mobile application gives users the ability to create projects, assign work orders, manage assets, and more. UpKeep is designed for small to midsize companies across various industry verticals. UpKeep offers services on a monthly subscription basis that includes support via phone, email, and through an online knowledge base.
Zoho Books
If you don’t want to manage a suite of apps in addition to the accounting software for your consulting business, our honorable mention pick, Zoho Books, might be the best choice.
QBO, Xero and FreshBooks are all robust solutions, but some of the features a consultant needs are available only as add-on applications. It’s easy to get caught up in a cycle of constantly shopping for the “perfect” application that suits all your business’s needs. This can be overwhelming and confusing.
Zoho Books solves the problem of app exhaustion by providing a full suite of applications right within the Zoho ecosystem. Regardless of the features you need in your accounting software, Zoho has solutions, called transaction modules, that will integrate directly with Zoho Books. Pair this with the rest of the Zoho ecosystem — including Mail, CRM and Office Suite — and you can easily run your entire consulting business using only Zoho products.
Outright
Another cloud solution to finances. Outright’s focus is on small business and their plans start from a very reasonable $10/mo. Outright is owned by GoDaddy.
Kashoo
Another new entrant on the scene, Kashoo markets itself as Simple Cloud Accounting. The interface does look straightforward and they heavily promote that their software works well on the iPad. Plans start from $16/mo
Sage
Sage has product offerings for all sizes. If it’s just you in the office, you can look at Sage One. If you’re part of a small team their Small Business solution will likely be a better fit. Probably Sage’s best known product is Simply Account or Peachtree. They’ve released new versions called Sage 50 – which I haven’t used.
Conclusion
Businesses are not born successful. They have to nurture their growth through different phases so as to be the most productive. Sometimes, they have to go through rough periods where they have to make unpopular decisions and make them work for themselves. The success of a business is contingent upon how relevant the industry it belongs to is to society. The success of an organization can be depicted as a graph where its growth curve has many ups and downs before it attains social acceptance as well as financial stability.
Most businesses rely on financial statements and reports to gauge the condition of their company and how it’s doing. When you run a consulting business, you need to know how your business is performing against your clients and if your company is making a profit or not and what and where your future prospects are to sustain or grow the business.