Seasonal business: 5 tips to save money on your accounting

1. Prepare yourself well

Hustle and bustle. Hectic. Long days. Hurry to deliver orders on time.

That is not a period to quietly enter and analyze the figures, with or without your accountant. As always, good preparation is half the battle.

Which things can you prepare?

Holiday workers: Based on data from previous years, you can estimate how busy it is and now start looking for reliable holiday helpers. This way you already have insight into your personnel costs, which will speed up the processing of your administration.
Stock: Use purchase and sales data from previous years and make your stock as complete as possible. Not only will you be able to guarantee delivery in the future, you also already have the numbers in your accounting.
Journey registration: Are deliveries or appointments already planned and do you charge travel costs or meter data management for this? Enter these in advance, you only have to check them later.
Advertising costs: Want to make (potential) customers enthusiastic about the coming season? Prepare newsletters and design advertisements. You can then include the costs in your administration.

2. Standardize and / or automate

Make sure that things that lend themselves to this can be placed in a standard format and let as many things as possible 'take care of themselves':

Create standard purchasing lists that also temporary employees can easily fill out.
Set up automatic purchase orders for things that are undoubtedly needed.
Make sure that automatic purchase orders are also paid by direct debit . There is then no stack of invoices that must be paid on time.
Ask suppliers to deliver all invoices digitally , so that no time is wasted scanning documents.

3. Keep track of hours worked

Creating schedules for high season employees - a nightmare for some entrepreneurs.

And once the rosters have been made, who then keeps track of whether the hours are actually worked or, more realistically, how much overtime is being worked?

Make sure that temporary employees in particular can register their hours quickly and easily : use an app and let them log in there, or create 'old-fashioned' time sheets.

Avoid them passing hours in different ways, such as a Whatsapp, e-mail or in passing. Because even though the hours are in a text message or email in black and white, you have to look for them everywhere for your administration.

Choose one system that works best for your business and let everyone adhere to it. If you let us know that only the hours that are passed on in this way will be paid, that will probably be arranged in no time.

4. Consult with your accountant or bookkeeper

Flexible services can be found everywhere these days - including in the financial sector.

Therefore, inquire whether it is possible to arrange a break in your contract or subscription with your external accountant when your business activities are completely shut down in the low season.

You can also look for an accountant who can perform accounting tasks ad hoc for an hourly rate.

5. Rely on good software

In your low season you can therefore prepare and plan as much as possible. But when the period of hustle and bustle arrives, efficient is the keyword, especially when it comes to your administration.

Good, creative and flexible software or utility billing software is a must - it can (and should!) Save you a lot of time.

As an entrepreneur in a seasonal industry, your business software must have at least the following functions :

Recurring invoices: Does a customer periodically purchase the same services or products? Then set up recurring invoices so that you no longer have to worry about them.
Schedule invoices: Are the orders already coming in? Then make sure that you prepare the invoices and have them sent automatically on the date you have chosen.
Flexible functionalities : If you do not or hardly do any administrative tasks during the low season, it is nice if you do not pay the full price for your accounting throughout the year.
Templates for activities: In high season you need to be able to schedule and clock hours quickly - great if you can quickly choose from a self-compiled list of frequently occurring tasks.
Hours planning / rosters: Have you already prepared the rosters? Then enter them for a clear overview. If desired, create users and link them to the rosters so that employees can also keep track of their hours themselves.

Doing business in a sector with a clear (or even extreme) high and low season is simply running or standing still. Probably that is what attracts you to this type of business. However, that does not mean that you cannot make things easier on yourself - and also sit back and enjoy the success in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the hustle and bustle.