Spring Clean Your Books: 3 Easy Wins That Save Time & Money Later
Now’s the perfect time to give your finances the same energy you gave your closet last weekend. It’s not just your closet that could use some spring cleaning. Your books need love too! Here are three quick ways to tidy up your finances this month:
Reconcile Your Bank Accounts
If you’ve skipped this, it’s like guessing your GPS coordinates without a map. Reconciling your accounts means matching what’s in your bookkeeping software with your actual bank and credit card statements. It’s how you catch double charges, missed payments, or sneaky fees that slip through the cracks. If you don’t reconcile regularly, you rely on incomplete data to make big decisions. That’s like running your business with a blindfold on — risky, stressful, and totally avoidable.
Schedule time once a month to reconcile — or better yet, let a bookkeeper do it for you so you can focus on what you actually enjoy.
Review Your Expense Categories
That “miscellaneous” bucket? It’s a red flag in disguise. When expenses are tossed into a catch-all category like “misc” or “general,” you’re missing insights that could help your business grow — and possibly raise eyebrows if you ever get audited. Mislabeling (or lazy labeling) also makes tax season a headache and could cost you deductions, and if you couldn’t explain it to your accountant, it doesn’t belong in “miscellaneous.”
You can easily clean it up by giving each transaction a clear, accurate home. Software like QuickBooks lets you create custom categories, so use them wisely.
Organize Receipts Digitally
Use tools like Dext or Hubdoc to make audit stress a thing of the past. You don’t need to keep shoeboxes of receipts anymore — we’re not in 1995. Tools like Dext, Hubdoc, or even QuickBooks mobile let you snap, upload, and sort receipts in seconds. Bonus: Many read the receipts for you and automatically pull in the vendor, date, and amount.
This makes audits easier (should the IRS ever come knocking) and ensures you have the proper backup documentation to support your expenses, which is critical for staying compliant and maximizing your deductions.