How do you know if you’ve outgrown your accounting system?
Some tell-tale signs are:
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With more people using your system, it tends to be sluggish or in some cases won’t even let 2 people do the same tasks at the same time.
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The types of reports you need as your business 
grows are not available or you lack confidence in the reliability of the figures.
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You are relying on reports prepared from Excel which are manually input from more than one source.
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Payroll takes more than 30 minutes each week.
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Customers and prospects are recorded and updated in more than 1 location, e.g. Accounting System, MS Outlook and a CRM system.
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You are nervous about fraud as sales invoices have mysteriously disappeared from your system.
Dash for cash
Everyone in business knows that cash is king in a recession.
You may have noticed a decrease in your bank balance or increase in your overdraft. To survive during and after the Global Financial Crisis you should focus on one or more of the following:
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Improve your debt collection process, ensuring it is systemised and consistently applied
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Reduce your amount of resources consumed in servicing slow payers
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Allocate scarce inventories and services to your best customers
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Clear surplus inventories
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Extend trading arrangements with your suppliers
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Trim your expenses
The difficulty with these processes is easily identifying and substantiating the potential problem areas that could be tackled. Business Intelligence reporting (BI), including Dashboards provide you with real time information that compare current results in the form of Key Performance Indicators (KPI's). KPI's are simple metrics (such as Stock Turnover, Days to Collect Invoices, Liquidity) that you can compare against a benchmark (e.g. your own past results or an industry standard).
You should consider BI tools that have both financial and sales KPIs to help you identify missed opportunities to grow your business. Why? Because to thrive in a tough market you need to grow your market share at the expense of your competitors. The best way to do that is to surround yourself with smart people and systems so you can make powerful and informed decisions to take your business beyond the pack.
This was a guest post by Rick Polito from Axsapt Pty Ltd. For more useful tips from Axsapt on how to improve your business, please click on the following link: http://www.axsapt.com/news/blog/