Financial management and accounting are critical to the success of your clients' business. Yet for many small business owners, limited finances and limited number of employees mean that owners must manage most of the day-to-day tasks of running their businesses. The complexity of budgeting, inventory, payroll, taxes, expenditures, and billing can be enough to overwhelm any business owner. As a result, small business owners have little time to devote the attention required to truly analyze their financial information to make smart business decisions.

As an accountant, you have small business clients who rely on you to tie together their books into comprehensive annual financial statements. They may also rely on you to set up, maintain, reconcile, and close their books. You can also help your clients by convincing them that simplifying financial management with integrated accounting software is the answer to most of their financial management problems.

Small business clients may initially balk at the expense or perceived administrative headaches of switching to integrated accounting software. Read on to learn some persuasive reasons that will help your clients understand the valuable solutions that this type of software can provide them.

Small business requirements for accounting software

Many small business owners capture their financial transactions by using a hodgepodge of unrelated software, including online banking software, spreadsheet programs, and word-processing programs. These disparate software solutions often fail to accommodate some basic small business needs, including:

• Minimizing data collection from multiple sources to reduce the time spent manually entering data
• Capturing an at-a-glance overview of a business
• Providing a snapshot of customer account information
• Connecting varied functions, such as invoicing and billable time-tracking, directly to customer accounts
• Allowing multiuser access

When surveyed about their accounting software needs, small business owners often place these requirements on their wish lists:

• Low cost
• No additional hardware requirements
• Minimal ramp-up time — that is, new software should solve problems quickly
• Easy integration with existing nonaccounting software
• Automated import of data from existing software

Benefits of integrated accounting software

When you discuss accounting software with your clients, make sure that they understand the solutions that integrated accounting software can provide. Most integrated accounting software products offer critical functions so that users can do the following:

• Create quotes, invoices, and purchase orders.
• Manage payroll and government taxes.
• Track and forecast inventory.
• Automate bank accounts and customer payments.
• Handle credit card purchases, print receipts and checks, and pay bills.
• Track billable time, and manage employee time records.
• Track accounting revisions, and create an audit trail.
• Manage sales data and customer jobs.
• Create reports that summarize key financial details.

In addition, some accounting software products can also be used to do the following:

• Track profit and loss and other important financial data to provide a snapshot of company status.
• Manage sales opportunities.
• Forecast sales, revenue, and other financial data.
• Export or share data with other software (such as the Microsoft Office System programs) that small businesses use every day.

Matching benefits to problems

Use this handy problem-and-benefit table to help your small business clients understand how the features of integrated accounting software can solve their financial management problems.

Choosing software to recommend

After you have fully informed your clients about the value of integrated accounting software, they may ask you for a software recommendation.

Several accounting software packages are designed specifically to support small businesses. Some of the more popular packages are:

• Intuit QuickBooks
• Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting 2006
• Sage Peachtree

When evaluating integrated accounting software to recommend to your clients, don't focus just on the tasks that the software performs — be sure that you also review the following factors:

• Ease of setup   Your clients should be able to install the software and import financial records without hiring a consultant.
• Intuitive data entry and processes   Accounting software should not require extensive training in order for your clients to become proficient.
• Multitasking   Your clients should be able to perform most accounting tasks by using the software.
• Easy integration   Data should be exported easily to other business software, such as spreadsheet, word-processing, and database software.
• Customized output   Your clients need to create their own format and style for reports, invoices, and letters.

Help your small business clients understand the many and varied benefits of integrated accounting software. You'll help them increase efficiency and accuracy in their financial management so that they make decisions that improve their companies' growth.