The following is a guest contribution from Raincatcher, a business broker focused on helping entrepreneurs buy and sell small and medium-sized businesses.

When you own a business, it’s easy to view accounting as a necessary evil, but not something that you can strategically use for growth. By re-framing your thinking and approach, you can use accounting to your advantage. Accounting practices can be an integral part of your strategy for growth. 

When Your Needs Outgrow Your Tools

Ovia Health is doing big things for women and families, and they need support that enables them the ability to grow at any pace, anytime. As a health and tech company, Ovia Health is committed to transforming the way employers support working women and families along their parenthood journey, improving outcomes by providing daily personalized engagement, proactively identifying potential health risks, and supporting a successful return to work.

But in 2018, the small finance team at Ovia Health needed an upgrade. They were dealing with some common accounting shortcomings related to their accounting software, in particular limited automation capabilities. This meant that they were still having to do a lot of manual bookkeeping on a regular basis, leading to human errors and inconsistencies. 

Though the deadline for filing your taxes may be months away, most small business experts agree: the two best times to get a jump on tax planning are “now” and “all the time.”

We know that isn’t always easy for an overworked, enterprising small business owner, but it’s crucial to your company’s growth and success to make tax planning and strategizing a year-round effort.

Closing the books at the quarter end, managing invoices, and categorizing expenses involve a wide array of complex tasks that are both laborious and prone to human error. We at Botkeeper are automating bookkeeping workflows through our human-assisted AI platform, and today have announced our $18M series A round, one of the largest A rounds for a Boston tech company.

Tax planning and preparation is a highly complex process, but it can be broken down into a few distinct buckets and simplified to allow business owners to complete their part of the process. Here’s a breakdown of all the basics to ensure you get the most for your money in 2018: Estimating Taxable Income, Estimating Tax Liability & Tax Planning, Determining How You Need to File Your Taxes, Filling Out the Forms, and Sending Everything In.

Businesses of all sizes engage in bookkeeping activities, and it’s a vital function to keep your business financially stable and in compliance with regulations and tax law. It’s the cornerstone of continuity but one that’s not as exciting as marketing or sales. No business can survive without this key endeavor.

As a small business owner, you’re surrounded by stress from morning to night (and even in your sleep). But there are ways to kill the killer of productivity and reclaim each day as a chance to make your mark in the world of entrepreneurship. Here are five ways to de-stress your days.

We recently caught up with TUGG's New Executive Director, Mike Cole to discuss the amazing impact that TUGG has had on the New England Non-Profit Sector. TUGG (Technology Underwriting Greater Good) is the nonprofit arm of Boston’s tech community that connects New England's tech entrepreneurs with the riskiest social enterprises serving local under-resourced youth through entrepreneurial, educational, and life experiences. TUGG is one of the only funders of experimental youth programming in Boston. 

Starting up a business can be very challenging, from setting up your day to day operations to choosing the best business strategy. After putting all these in place, one final hurdle you would face as a small business owner is choosing the right credit card processing company; a company appointed by a merchant to handle transactions from assorted channels such as credit cards and debit cards for merchant acquiring banks. For first-time business owners, sifting through so many processing companies (that are doing more or less the same thing) can be confusing. Don't worry, we've got you covered!

We recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Steve Hooper, Co-founder and CEO of Kigo Kitchen. Steve was kind enough to share a bit of his experience on bringing a new level of AI and automation into the organization by using Botkeeper.

 Cash flow is essential for the healthy growth of any business. Making sales and delivering your products or services to the customers is great, but it doesn’t amount to much if you don’t have money on-hand when you need it. A lot of small businesses end up taking out loans to cover short term revenue gaps, and end up paying out interest over time for that momentary need.

The SaaS space is growing like crazy. Today’s business owner has numerous software applications built into their company framework, and is getting a ton of emails every day with the promise of the bigger better option. But how do you even know if you’re getting the most bang for your buck when it comes to your software spend? Are your employees using the tools you've invested in? What are your employees even signing up for? Should you be evaluating competitive vendors? When are all of your contracts up? Which new evaluations are worth your time?