How SyncBooks Can Help Startups Manage Their Finances

A startup has little money, little time and a lot riding on both. You need to know how long the cash will last, whether each product or project pays for itself, and what to show investors at the next board meeting. Bookkeeping can’t be allowed to eat the hours that should go into building the business.

Here is how SyncBooks helps a young company keep its finances in order from day one.

Budgets that match how you work

Tag income and expenses by class (a department or product line), by location (a store or region) and by project. Then set a budget per account and month, for the whole company or for one class or location. Start from last year’s figures plus a percentage, or from scratch.

The budget against actual report compares the plan with the books by month, quarter or year, so you see overspending early and can move money where it is needed.

Cash flow you can see coming

Runway is the number that matters most. SyncBooks gives you two views of it:

• The statement of cash flows shows how cash actually moved: from operations, from investing and from financing.
• The cash flow forecast looks 30, 60 or 90 days ahead from today’s bank balances, open invoices and bills, recurring invoices and bills and, if you choose, your budget.

Bring in bank activity by importing a statement from any bank, and use bank rules to record lines in a few clicks. Daily bank feeds from US and Canadian banks through Plaid open soon.

Getting paid on time

Recurring invoices bill customers on a schedule. Every invoice has a pay link where the customer can pay by card through Stripe. Payment reminders go out before, on and after the due date, from your own mailbox. If you sell subscriptions or services paid in advance, give an invoice line a service period and the revenue is earned month by month, with a deferred revenue report that ties to the books.

Reports for investors

Investors expect a profit and loss statement, a balance sheet and a statement of cash flows, and they expect them to be right. SyncBooks builds all three from the books, on an accrual or a cash basis. Custom reports add the columns you need, such as periods side by side, classes, locations or budget, and every report downloads as a CSV file or a PDF.

Each report also says whether anything is still waiting to post, so you never send partial numbers by accident.

Project profitability

If you bill clients for projects, track time with a timer or by hand, mark bills, expenses and stock issued to the project as billable, and invoice it all in one click, at cost plus a markup or as a fixed fee by percentage or milestone. The project profitability view shows revenue, costs, labor at cost, the margin and how much of the budget is used.

Equipment and fixed assets

Laptops, machinery and vehicles go in the fixed asset register with their cost and useful life. Straight-line depreciation posts every month on its own, so the balance sheet stays right without a spreadsheet on the side.

Tax: the figures, ready

SyncBooks prepares the figures you need for tax time; it does not file returns or pay taxes for you.

• Sales tax. If you sell taxable goods in the US, tax is worked out per line from the ship-to address, using rates from the states’ own Streamlined Sales Tax files. The liability report shows what you collected and owe per state and period.
• 1099s. The 1099 report lists payments to suppliers flagged for a 1099-NEC or 1099-MISC, and flags missing tax IDs and W-9s.
• Payroll. With the SyncBooks Payroll add-on, payroll taxes are worked out and the W-2, W-3, Form 941 and Form 940 figures are prepared. See which states are covered.

Your accountant can join your workspace as a collaborator, free, to check the figures and file.

Room to grow

Many founders end up with more than one company: a holding company, a company per product, or a new entity in another state. SyncBooks keeps each company’s books separate under one login, with a Home board across all of them. When you add a company, you don’t start over in a new system.

Start simple, and add classes, budgets, projects and companies as you need them.