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If you are anything like me you HATE doing bills. I am all about making my life more streamed line and that is even more true when it comes to book keeping and bills. It seems that you don’t have to be Samantha from Bewitched anymore to have bills automatically pay themselves or have you book keeping automatically do the dirty work for you. Here are some suggestions for online money management that I use to spend less time thinking about money and more trying to make it!
e-bills
This is the most amazing feature since sliced bread. Through your bank you can automatically received and pay your bills. This makes your life easier by eliminated two things. First, you can cancel your paper statements and go green– saving paper and your time filing paper that you eventually will shred anyway. Second, you can set up the bill to automatically pay itself! You can choose to pay in full, or just to pay the minimum amount. Check with your bank to set up these services.
Online Finance Management Tools
Once you get your bills automated it is time to tie it all together and see where it is going. Most banks offer something that will tie into your bank accounts as well as into your credit cards so you can easily and automatically see where all that hard earned money is going. Bank of America offers this but I am not a huge fan of their built in tool. It seems a bit clunky but it does do the job. However, some banks offer FinanceWorks or if your bank doesn’t offer it you can use its sister site Mint (this is mostly for personal use). Both are free services. I have found FinanceWorks to be extremely helpful and easy to use, but have only used it for personal use. There is a Small Business FinanceWorks that I have not used since the banks I use do not offer the service.
For my business I use Outright. It has many features that are designed for small businesses. Such as Yearly and Quarterly Taxes! Which is a HUGE time saver when it time comes to pay Uncle Same. It is a very easy to use website and all your accounts will automatically update. All you need to do is go in there every once in awhile and make sure that you have properly categorized the transaction to match your Schedule C Categories. Unlike both Mint and FinanceWorks, which are both Intuit, if you use Paypal, there is no way to automatically sync with those Financial tools. With Outright, it will sync with Payapal! Since that is how I process credit cards and receive payments for invoices, this feature is worth its weight in gold! Outright costs $9.95 a month but since it offers Paypal and Freshbooks and Harvest Invoicing, and all but sends your Schedule C to DC! It is worth the monthly costs.
Of course Intuit offers Quickbooks Online ranging in price from $12.95 on up to $78. You can explore their services here. If you need a more heavy hitter then this might be your best choice, as long as you don’t use paypal. For the size and functions of my business, I am happy using a separate invoicing system, a money tracking system, and then Paypal as my means to collect payment. But Quickbooks Online does offer all of those services bundled into one place.
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