Optimizing Your Practice: Top Strategies for Accounting for Veterinarians

It’s important that veterinary practice owners have a basic understanding of accounting and bookkeeping terms to avoid losses simply due to confusion about terminology. Part of the expected responsibilities of a veterinary practice owner is to learn and understand all aspects of managing veterinary bookkeeping a business. To ensure success, it’s in a veterinary practice’s best interest to use in-depth, accurate techniques when it comes to business planning, bookkeeping, tax planning and accounting. Cash flow is the lifeblood of any business, and veterinary practices are no exception.

These include performing services like surgeries, selling medication, prescription clinical food, and even trinkets located in the waiting area. Key veterinary organizations came together to discuss the need for a profession-wide chart of accounts. AAHA and VMG collaborated on a combination, and the AAHA/VMG Chart of Accounts and Field Definitions was born. The AAHA/VMG Chart of Accounts promises a new era in veterinary accounting, Dr. Cavanaugh said. One significant benefit is creating a clearer picture of gross margins in a practice’s main sources of revenue.

Travel, Tourism & Entertainment Industry

Effective cash flow management is pivotal for maintaining financial stability and facilitating day-to-day operations. This involves controlling recurring costs, speeding up payments, and ensuring the balance sheet is in order. The challenge is turning all of this data into actionable intelligence you can use to improve practice financial management and boost profitability. Payroll management is a key service of veterinary CPAs, ensuring accuracy in recording team wages and benefits, which forms a critical part of the financial health of a veterinary practice. Managing accounts payable is another significant service offered, which includes tax return purposes, bill paying, and financial statement services. By partnering with a bookkeeper familiar with these industry-specific challenges, veterinary practices can focus more on delivering quality care to their patients while ensuring their financial health.

As important as it is to collect outstanding accounts, it’s important to estimate expected expenses and income over a specific future period of time, or more simply, to budget your money. Managing your financial records can be tricky, but there are several accounting software programs that can help. ‍Financially savvy owners and managers of veterinary practices understand the important role that KPIs play in running a financially healthy practice. As you wrap up 2020 and start planning for the new year, now is a good time to identify the most important KPIs for your practice and implement a plan for measuring, monitoring and analyzing them.

Brick & Mortar Industry

Whether you’re saving for that first house, college or retirement, want your money to work for you, or are trying to teach your child money management – we have a savings account for you. By adding another set of eyes to your bookkeeping it ensures that errors, intentional or unintentional, cannot be made without being discovered by another person. Consideration of seasonality and economic trends is necessary to enhance the accuracy of the budget, and it should be adjusted to account for known price increases, inflation, or shifts in the practice’s operations.

• Consultants, economists and accountants are better able to evaluate and analyze the industry.
• This will give you the confidence you need to make better financial decisions for your veterinary clinic.
• There is no guarantee any funds will be in the client’s bank account in the future.
• An additional benefit is that the AAHA/VMG Chart of Accounts helps everyone speak the same language, Scott said.
• A thriving balance sheet keeps the clinic doors open, and supplies exam rooms and labs with state-of-the-art equipment to enhance patient care.
• To avoid an excess balance in accounts receivable, a practice should strive to receive full payment at the time of service.

In addition to valuable insights on your business, you’ll now be fully prepared for any reporting to tax agencies, lenders, financial advisors, practice consultants and other stakeholders. We do BAS, VAT, GST101A, Sales Tax, etc. reduce attribution errors and costs, and ensure indirect taxes are handled correctly. If you decide to go with us, we’ll take bookkeeping off your plate—for good. We’re able to help in multiple capacities that are affordable for you. In larger organizations, financial record-keeping and reporting is handled by a team of people.