Please HELP, getting myself all muddled up

[PremiumSlatesUK]

Hi Everyone

I’m Steven Evans i run an e-commerce business. I have personally setup my quickfile account and have been manually doing my own bookkeeping i.e adding and creating sales & purchasing invoices, i have also done my first VAT return through quickfile but now the business is getting extremely busy i’m starting to slip as there many factors to consider and i’m beginning to think i’m making life extremely hard for myself! can someone whose experienced tell me a better way of doing the below.

I accept online orders (woocommerce- wordpress) and telephone/email orders- i manually add a new sales invoice in quickfile each time a new order comes in.

depending on how my customers pay either BACS, or stripe/ paypal i then create a purchase invoice for the CC fee amount and link it to the sales invoice through the invoice number.

I then create a purchase order to input my suppliers invoice and tag a copy of there invoice as a receipt. I then pay my supplier and deliver the goods.

but the problem i’m having is for orders where the customers have paid via paypal/stripe i have to wait several days before they release payment to me, this isn’t a problem with my supplier but i tend to input the purchase order once the payment has been received.

dates and figures are starting to misalign and if it continues to get busier i may have to employ an accountant.

in regards to accounts i have a business bank account, stripe account & Paypal account. I only have the bank account listed but not connected to quickfile. I was just about to connect the feed but saw a few negative comments on here etc but i think it would be best if i did connect my bank feed? but need a little reassurance and guidance on how to make the process easier.

I appreciate any support/ comments you give, i know what i’m asking is very basic but i’m new to filing company accounts and quickfile. if there is someone who is experienced enough to give me some guidance and get me on track, i would of course be willing to pay. The business is very basic so no major expenses or complicated tax situations etc to consider.

Thank you for your time and comments.

[Bluesden]

I think you may find life a bit easier with setting up merchant accounts. I use Sumup for instance and have them set as a merchant. If a customer taps on the SumUp machine immediately after a job I raise an invoice for that sale later in the day and immediately attribute a payment to it from the Sumup merchant account. This clears the invoice but shows that Sumup owes the business £xx. In the Sumup merchant account I create a transaction for the charges and allocate these to Bank charges and when Sumup moves the money to me (usually 24 hours later) I simply transfer the net amount from my Sumup account to my main business bank account.

Accounting for income from a payment service provider May help further