Training

We can provide you with the intelligence and support you need to improve your business performance. We have lots of online resources available to guide you through the day to day management of the software that you can refer back to anywhere, at any time.

From a 45 minute overview to a short guide on how to raise an invoice, there is a wealth of knowledge.
All the software is designed for non-accountants so after a few goes, it will feel like you’ve been using it forever.

Having said that we do appreciate that sometimes you need to speak to a real person, so you can call KS Connect on 0808 281 0830.

Invoicing

We like to keep a single data source where possible so we are keen for you to raise any invoices directly in QuickBooks. You can send them by email or post directly to your customers. We can also do this for you as an add-on service.

By using QuickBooks for this and matching invoices to your bank receipts, we can keep your outstanding sales ledger up to date so you know who has paid you and crucially who hasn’t!

If you want to automate how you chase your debts, we can introduce an additional service that sends debt chasing emails at regular intervals. Easy.

Spending

In most cases, whenever you spend money, you will receive an invoice or receipt that needs to be accounted for. This process can be automated too so that the data is extracted and a digital copy is held in the cloud and linked to the accounts software. No more scrabbling around shoe boxes full of records!

The first step is to convert any paper documents to digital images – scanning to pdf’s or taking a picture on a phone using an app both work well. Alongside this, your suppliers who already email you directly with invoices can send them to a dedicated email address for processing.

The software then takes over. Optical character recognition technology extracts the data from the digital copy and posts it to the accounts. We can have an authorisation level before the posting, if appropriate. Sometimes words or numbers can’t be recognised (handwritten taxi receipts!) so these are manually input by the software providers.

Once the invoice is in the accounts, any payments on credit cards and from bank accounts are then matched.
This works really well for employee expenses too. The software can track the last four digits of a payment card printed on a receipt and allocate this to a particular member of your team.

Your Team

One of the most important areas is making sure your team get paid the right amount at the right time. We have a few options depending on the size of the payroll.

For smaller teams, up to 10 people, the cloud accounting software has built in payroll that works really well. For larger teams, we run separate payroll software which has a few more functions, such as being able to import payroll information.

We’ll agree a timetable with you for every payroll so that you can get the information to us and we can process it in good time to make any payments. Payslips will be sent back to you by email and we’ll tell you what you need to pay HMRC once we’ve filed the monthly return with them.

That’s not all. It’s important you have things like an employment contract in place and we have an add-on service that can help. We can put in place an outsourced HR function to help you deal with the minefield of employment legislation as you grow your team; it’s always handy to have someone at the end of the phone be able to talk to!

Compliance

Why not let us take some of the compliance admin away so you can concentrate on running your organisation? Running a business can be daunting, so it would be beneficial to give you a steer on what you need to focus on. When we welcome you on-board, we will provide you with the key dates you need to know so there are no surprises.

As an add-on service, we can also act as your official registered office. This is particularly useful if you work out of your own home and means your personal address isn’t publicly available.

Year End

Every company, partnership, sole trader and charity needs to prepare year end accounts and where relevant, a tax return. Our accounts summarise your financial transactions for the year, put them in categories and show a snapshot of your assets and liabilities at the year end date.

Included in our service is the preparation of your accounts, company tax return, partnership tax return and if you are a sole trader, your personal tax return. We can always add-on more personal tax returns for directors, partners and other individuals if required.

For incorporated businesses (those registered at Companies House) the accounts have to be prepared in a set format and filed so they are available for anyone to see. If you meet certain criteria, a set with limited information can be filed which means you disclose less information. You will still need to prepare a full set of accounts for the taxman and your shareholders.

Charity accounts are filed with the Charity Commission, but again we can take care of that for you and advise you on what information you need to include.

Data Insight

We see lots of financial and non-financial data flowing through organisations but not many people actually use it or know what they should be looking at. You may be missing out on valuable data insight into how well you are doing.

We will give you direct access to data analytics tools so you can see some of your key performance indicators and measure how well you are performing month by month and year by year. Not only that, we look after thousands of businesses across a range of sectors and collect public data so we can prepare anonymous industry benchmarks.

This allows us to show you how well you are doing in your industry and give you advice on how to grow your organisation.
A lot of our clients also ask us to help prepare forecasts and measure their actual performance.
If required, we can provide this as a bespoke add-on service.