As a business, you need to keep track of your financial statements and expenses in order to effectively monitor your business growth. This is why it’s important to have the right accounting forms at your disposal. In this article, we’ll be discussing the most essential accounting forms you should have as a small business and why they are so crucial to your company’s success.

What is an Accounting Form?

Accounting forms are used to access information about the income and expenditures of businesses. It also provides data on potential losses, the actual loss, the outstanding liabilities, and the assets. They are also used to avoid or eliminate costly mistakes in businesses.

There are also observable differences in the way the techniques are used (automated, manual, and mechanized), how the analytics and synthetic accounting are combined, and how the chronological and systematic data recording relate to one another.

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Why Every Small Business Needs Accounting Forms

Accounting Forms help small businesses to monitor business expenses and discover new growth opportunities. They also provide important information concerning the earnings, profit, losses and help businesses in the decision-making. 

In addition, business owners become accountable to the government’s tax obligations through the maintenance of accurate records. 

Accounting forms also help investors and stakeholders to evaluate the performance and financial state of a company. 

It is important that businesses have accounting operations to avert failure because one of the common reasons why small businesses fail is poor financial management. This is expected because small businesses have limited resources, hence, a limited budget. Accounting information helps businesses to plan their growth and development.

Other ways account keeping helps small businesses include:

• Small businesses can trust accounting to help them understand the concepts of fixed costs, variable costs, and how to negotiate project costs. This way they don’t end up losing money on projects.
• Accounting forms give small businesses a better grasp of the state of their business. This is achieved by studying balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements.
• Accounting helps small businesses track cash flow. By implementing efficient record-keeping policies, and developing a solid financial strategy, business owners can prevent their businesses’ cash flow from running dry.
• It also helps to detect and avoid fraud either by the customers, employees, or suppliers
• Business owners are able to effectively audit when they understand the financial dealings of the business.
• Bankers are more open to dealing with business owners who have in-depth knowledge of the business finances and understand the financial implications.

The key to small business success is to review their financial statements and implement detailed budgeting that’ll allow them to discover operational inefficiencies.  

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How To Design an Accounting Form

Contrary to beliefs that finance officers and accountants are solely responsible for writing or keeping records of all transaction details. They are also responsible for analyzing and evaluating data. This allows the accountants to draw a conclusion and offer recommendations that are documented.

When an accountant or a finance officer writes accounting forms, it is important that all information is written concisely before being recorded or documented. This is because the reports or records are essential in a business organization. It also determines the level of business operations of the business with regards to cost. 

Consequently, accountants must write their reports with precision, purpose, and in concise language. The mode of communications will take the form of either of these; letters, reports, memoranda, or papers. Accountants should have their audience in mind when writing their reports. For example, the tone and style employed while sending a colleague an in-house email should be different from that of a client.

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Tips on Writing an Accounting Form

Accountants and finance officers must practice effective writing procedures. This is because they spend lots of time writing or documenting reports. So, while writing an accounting form, the following tips can be used by accountants or finance officers:

1. Know your audience.

As earlier established, being aware of who your audience is will help you to set the tone of your reports. There should be distinct differences between reports that are geared toward the public and the ones aimed strictly at the company members. 

2. Clearly indicate the purpose of the report or form.

You should state whether the accounting report is for the month-by-month income and expenditures, the increase or decrease in sales, the financial standing, or the income tax.

3. Write the content in a clear, concise, accurate, and timely manner.

4. Organize the information appropriately. 

5. Follow the standard accounting form or report writing format or guidelines.

Make sure that your report is a fact-filled document. You can make use of charts, graphs, and other information to aid reading and comprehension.

For example, you can use a pie chart to indicate the retail sales and the online sales. Make use of data in your presentation. “The company’s profit margins went up over the last six months” is baseless if not backed up with data. Instead, give an accurate percentage of the increase. If the document does not allow you to indicate percentages, indicate it in an appendix. 

6. Ensure that the written report has no errors. It must be well polished.

7. You may include projections or recommendations in the conclusion. It is also important, to be honest about possible challenges that may arise so that they can be quickly combated.

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8 Accounting Form Templates Every Business Needs

• Cheque Book Request Form Template

All small businesses need a checkbook for the smooth running of their business. A checkbook is a small book that contains already printed paper instruments that are issued to checking account holders when they pay for goods or services. It contains sequentially numbered checks that can be used as a bill of exchange. 

The checks are usually preprinted with the account holder’s name, address, account number, bank routing number, check number, and other information for identification. You can create a ChequeBook with the Formplus Cheque book Request Form. It can be used conveniently by current bank account holders to make requests for checkbooks. Account-holders can fill out their account name, account type, account number, type of checkbook requested, and so on. 

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• Credit Card Payment Form Template

The credit card payment form template by Formplus is carefully designed to help businesses create a payment structure to charge customers’ cards on a regular basis. 

Customers can fill out their contact details, types of card, amount to be billed, upload e-signature e.t.c with this form template. This form can be used as a standalone form and it can also be embedded on your website. 

• Client Tax Questionnaire Template

Formplus has a unique client tax questionnaire form template that allows businesses to collect and document taxpayers’ information. You can use this form to fill out your client’s personal details, financial, medical information, history, and so on. You can also use Formplus storage to secure all the taxpayers’ information. Get started with this tax questionnaire today.

• Purchase Approval Form Template

Businesses can use the purchase approval form to validate their purchases and the vendors. 

This form can be used to fill out the product description, quantity, price, vendor information, and so on. All the transaction details and invoices can be stored using Formplus storage. 

• Office Expense Form Template

Small businesses can track and document their office expenses with ease using the Formplus Office Expense Form template. This free office expense form template is designed to allow businesses employees to log in daily office expenses and the purpose of the expense with ease. With this form, managers can control and manage expenditure in the office. 

• Daily Inventory Form Template

If you are a small business owner, you can use the daily inventory form as an information form that can be used to track and document daily inventory. 

You can list all the items sold with this form. You can use the secure Formplus storage system to store the details of this Inventory. You can also customize this form template to suit your needs and style. 

• Material Inventory Form Template

You can use the material inventory form to record and track the list of materials in your inventory. With this form, your employees or inventory managers can update the material inventory list easily. You can also record the name of each material, the quantity, description, etc. 

• Fuel Requisition Form Template

If your business requires constant transportation, make use of Formplus fuel requisition form template. Logistic companies and organizations that use a lot of vehicles can use this form.

This fuel requisition form is designed to help employees streamline fuel requisition in an organization. With this form, drivers can fill out the required volume of fuel, purpose, and date of request. The business can use this form to monitor their fuel consumption and prepare for it.

Conclusion

As a business, it is highly important to have a secure backup and storage option for all your organization’s information. Many businesses usually store all their accounting records and financial information in a single storage, which is not advisable. In this case, your company information is at risk of human error. a server crash, viruses, and more. 

Hence, ensure you invest in a good accounting process and also acquire a good storage system for your information. Formplus offers a secure storage system and several accounting form templates that can be used by organizations, businesses, and banks.