Talking about accounting usually makes many people’s hair stand on end. And the thing is, let’s not kid ourselves, we’re talking about an activity that, seen from the outside, seems terrifyingly complex, right? Dozens of books, thousands of notes, cross references, endless graphs, statistics to stop a train… and all, of course, adjusted to predefined models that seem to be set in stone. And what is the consequence of such reading? Well, unless they can’t avoid it, there are quite a few professionals, mainly freelancers, who avoid taking the step to enter the world of debits and credits.
However, Is accounting really as complex as many perceive? The surprise is that, or at least not at the level of knowledge necessary to correctly manage accounts when we are self-employed and want to have good control over our financial situation. And this is a key point that we must understand: accounting is the best thermometer of our economic situation at all times.
The basic concepts of accounting, that is, those that we will need to manage our accounts as self-employed, are limited to recognizing the different types of books (volumes of records) that we must manage, knowing certain accounts (which are nothing more than the codes that identify the different types of expenses and income) and, of course, knowing how to clearly distinguish which elements are included in the DEBIT (operations that generate income) and which are included in the CHARGE (those that generate output). With this base, you will have practically all the way traveled.
And what do you need to manage the accounting of your professional activities if you are not required to submit said documentation to the Tax Agency? Well the ideal is to rely on two basic tools: one for accounting management and another to manage billing. Whether in software or cloud service mode, these tools will be very useful to you, since they will not only help you manage all the necessary information, but they will also provide you with valuable insights on the economic performance of your professional activity.
Any accounting solution?
The quick answer is no. The quick but a little less is to ask if it makes sense to buy an eighteen-wheeler to deliver pizzas, or a Caterpillar to build sand castles on the beach. The needs to manage accounting are very diverse, and generally respond to the scale of the activity they intend to collect. In other words, managing the accounting of a multinational company with tens of thousands of employees is not the same as what an SME or self-employed person needs.
For this specific profile, there is a plethora of applications and services, although experience shows us that not all of them have taken into account that the profile of part of its users may not be that of accounting professionals and, consequently, they overwhelm the user from the first moment with an avalanche of data that can be intimidating.
In this regard, solutions such as those offered by Software DELSOL offer an optimal balance in their interfaces, by providing quick access to the necessary functions in a clean environment, not cluttered and in which it is easy to move around to quickly find what we need. In addition, on their website we can find free webinars to learn how to use their solutions.
But then, back to the initial question, is accounting an obligation or a necessity? In many cases it is an obligation, that is indisputable, but the most important part is that, in reality, is a necessity in all casesboth in which it is an obligation and those in which it is not.
An accounting, even basic, of our professional activities, provides us, and especially over time, a lot of information about them. Some data that will allow you, on many occasions, detect expenses that you could reduce or even eliminateassess the performance of your various activities (if you practice more than one), assess the evolution of your income…
Keeping accounts of your professional activities, even if you do not have a legal obligation to do so, will only take a few minutes a week to make the necessary entries, and in return it will provide you with a lot of information that, during the day to day and without tools of analysis, can go unnoticed.
Therefore, our recommendation is, without a doubt, that you take the step, that you lose your fear of accounting and you are encouraged to try a solution, be it software or cloud service, to manage your accounts professionally.
