Accounting Tips That Can Benefit Small Businesses

Julie Starr • September 9, 2022



One thing that no small business can afford to overlook is its accounting practices. If you make the mistake of not putting enough thought and planning into your accounting methods, you’ll probably end up paying the price for that later. Financial mismanagement is one of the major reasons many new businesses fail.

So if you want to make sure that you don’t end up in that position going forward, it’s in your best interests to start learning as much as you can about good accounting practices today. That way, you can implement those ideas and provide the solid financial foundations your small business really needs.

Ensure Your Personal and Business Finances Are Kept Separate

First of all, you need to do the sensible thing and make sure that your business and personal finances are kept completely separate from one another. It might not sound like a big deal, but it really can be. If your business were to fail, you don’t want your personal finances to take a hit as a result, but that’s exactly what will happen if you tie the business’s finances to your personal finances. It’s one of the biggest mistakes new entrepreneurs make.

Understand Tax Obligations and Budget Accordingly

It’s important to understand the tax obligations your business has and to prepare for them too. When you fail to understand your business’s tax obligations, you run the very real risk of landing the business in hot water with the authorities for no good reason. When you don’t know how much tax you owe and you don’t budget with that in mind, you might struggle to pay when the tax man comes knocking on your door. So don’t take that risk.

Keep Hold of Your Receipts

When you’re doing the accounts and making sure that your taxes are not being overpaid, it’s a lot easier when you have all of the necessary receipts at your disposal. So it’s important to make sure that you’re keeping hold of all of those receipts and storing them somewhere in a careful and managed way. That way, you can make sure that you don’t end up stressing out and messing things up later on, as often happens.

Ensure Records Are Accurate

Your records need to be completely accurate and there’s no excuse for them not being. If you’re making mistakes constantly, all of those little accounting errors will add up to something quite significant, and that’s when your business can find itself in real trouble. That’s clearly not what you want to happen. So definitely think about how you can keep things fully accurate at all times across the business and its accounting practices.

Accounts Receivable Financing is an Option

If you want to borrow money for the business in order to fund its future growth, you might want to think about using accounts receivable financing . This is when you take out money against the invoices that haven’t yet been paid by clients. That money is owed to you, so borrowing against it shouldn’t be a problem. It’s a technique that’s used by many businesses, and as long as you understand how it functions, it could be beneficial for you.

Make Use of Bookkeeping Software

If you’re not already, you should certainly think about starting to use bookkeeping software to keep things organized and structured. Good bookkeeping software helps you to structure everything clearly and concisely, and it makes your life a lot easier than it might otherwise be. Good software options are easy to come by nowadays, so you can try a few of them out and see which of them works best for you. 

Be Prepared for Major Expenses

It’s always a good idea to have some money set aside in an emergency fund because you never know when you might have to deal with major expenses. Some issues can come your way at any moment, and you might have to spend a lot of money to get things back on track. You don’t want to go into debt every time an unexpected expense comes your way, so creating some kind of buffer is definitely important for the business.

So if you think that now is a good time to make changes to the way in which your business manages its money and takes care of its accounting obligations, be sure to make the most of each of the tips and ideas shared above. Your business will benefit greatly.

Smart Sensors, Smarter Supply Chains: Enhancing Traceability in Food & Beverage

By Julie Starr • June 20, 2025
In today’s competitive food and beverage (F&B) landscape, traceability is no longer a compliance checkbox—it’s a differentiator. The ability to track every step of a product’s journey, from origin to shelf, is vital for regulatory accuracy and to ensure brand integrity, supply chain agility, and consumer trust. Add smart sensors to the mix: the quiet, tireless observers revolutionizing supply chain intelligence. Traceability Has a Data Problem Despite digitization across many F&B operations, most traceability systems still rely on fragmented or manual data inputs. Batch numbers, barcodes, and handwritten logs often stand between a supplier and clarity when things go wrong. This approach struggles with latency and scale. When contamination or delays occur, root cause analysis is slow, costly, and damaging. Smart sensors shift this paradigm by embedding real-time, contextual intelligence into every stage of the supply chain . Whether monitoring humidity in transit or recording fill-level precision in bottling plants, they remove the guesswork by turning physical conditions into structured, time-stamped data. From Passive Monitoring to Active Optimization Sensors used to be reactive tools, alerting operators to anomalies. But smart sensors now play a proactive role in process control. They measure, and they interpret. For example, temperature sensors embedded in cold chain logistics can dynamically adjust cooling systems or flag threshold breaches before spoilage occurs. These advancements reduce waste and loss at a systemic level. In a production facility, smart sensors integrated with PLCs can enforce recipe compliance, verify clean-in-place processes, and detect micro-stoppages in real-time. This enables operations to pivot faster and isolate inefficiencies before they cascade downstream. Trust is Built on Transparency Consumers are paying more attention to what they eat and drink. They’re looking beyond labels, expecting visibility into how ingredients are sourced, processed, and handled. Smart sensors make this level of transparency achievable —without burdening manufacturers with excessive manual oversight. By capturing metadata throughout production and distribution, these sensors create a digital footprint that’s tamper-resistant and instantly accessible. When this data is integrated with a central platform, brands can respond confidently to audits, recalls, and quality assurance challenges with a level of precision that would be impossible through legacy systems. Intelligence Without Infrastructure Overhaul One common misconception is that adding smart sensors requires a top-down reinvention of supply chain infrastructure. In reality, companies can deploy edge sensors in a modular, scalable way. Many modern solutions offer plug-and-play functionality, allowing for fast integration with existing machinery and MES systems. This is where suppliers like alps-machine.com are reshaping expectations. Rather than pushing proprietary ecosystems, they design sensor-ready equipment with interoperability in mind. This future-proofs investment and keeps businesses nimble in the face of regulatory or market shifts. Designing for Data Longevity Sensors are only as powerful as the context they capture. A smart implementation ensures the data collected can be standardized, stored securely, and accessed meaningfully across departments. This means moving beyond local dashboards toward centralized, queryable datasets that inform everything from supplier contracts to marketing claims. As AI and predictive analytics become more accessible, these data-rich environments will unlock new capabilities—such as predicting demand spikes based on real-time freshness indicators or adjusting production schedules dynamically based on in-transit sensor feedback. Final Thoughts: Smarter Isn’t Optional Traceability isn’t solved by more paperwork—it’s solved by embedded intelligence. Smart sensors don’t just help businesses know what happened; they help prevent the wrong things from happening at all. For companies in the food and beverage sector, adopting smart sensors is less about chasing innovation and more about enabling resilience, speed, and confidence in every decision.

Eco-Friendly Garden Prep: Summer Tips for a Greener Business Space

By Julie Starr • June 5, 2025
If you're lucky enough to have a garden as part of your business, taking some time to set it up for summer is a great investment of your energy. Not only will it be ready for your customers to spend time in, but you can also incorporate some eco-friendly elements into it. Many people just think about the property and what eco-friendly updates they can make , but there are plenty that you can implement in your garden. This gives you the best of both worlds. You own a sacred and beautiful place for your customers to spend their summer, and at the same time, you can do your part for a better planet. If this is the route you want to take, then you also need to consider how to do this with the different seasons. To help you on your journey, here are some top tips for preparing your garden for summer. Plant trees and flowers Planting trees and flowers in your garden is a must. It will make a beautiful scene of nature for everyone to enjoy. Trees will provide people and animals with shade, as well as provide a habitat for wildlife. More trees are needed in the world because they purify the air that we breathe. Flowers, especially if you plant with pollinators in mind, can be an excellent way to attract bees and butterflies, which contribute largely to the earth. Use natural pest control When preparing your garden for summer, you can do this more sustainably and kindly by using natural pest control. Simply by planting trees and flowers, you are likely to attract lots of different wildlife, some of which may destroy your efforts. While all wildlife should be considered, you may need to take measures. Some better and more eco-friendly ways you can do this, as opposed to spraying toxic chemicals onto your plants and into the air, you can implement companion planting, using protective nets over your crops, choosing resilient plants, using natural repellents, and encouraging natural predators so nature can do its thing. Maintain your garden Maintaining your garden in itself can make it more eco-friendly. Composting your garden waste regularly, and kitchen waste can help you to reduce overall waste and create nutrient-rich soil. This is a great cycle of sustainability. You can also keep on top of things that need cleaning and replacing, so you can recycle the materials for other garden structures and projects, and repurpose things around your garden before they become waste. If you have features in your garden like a swimming pool, then a regular pool maintenance service is going to be vital in keeping your water consumption to a minimum, as when it is cleaned and maintained, it will need to be drained and refilled less as well as using less energy. You could also consider how you can use natural purification methods to reduce chemical usage and support biodiversity right in your backyard. Your garden is just an eco-friendly project waiting to be built. Use these top tips to help you get started.