Many novice managers confuse:

• sale,
• turnover,
• cash flow,
• and profit.

And that's normal: no one has really explained it to them. However, this confusion can be very costly, especially in the early years when every penny counts.

🧠 A useful reminder

💡 VAT is a line item imposed by the government on your invoice. You collect it, yes, but only to pay it back later. It is not a profit, it is a temporary cash advance.

📅 VAT returns: why you need to take care of them regularly

Unlike some of our colleagues who still practise this, we require our clients to file their VAT returns every quarter from their first year of business:

• ✅ This allows taxation to be monitored in line with the company's pace.
• ✅ Avoid ending up with a massive and unexpected cash outflow at the end of the year.

❌ Declaring VAT once a year often means discovering too late that you have to pay back up to 1/6 of your available cash flow.

🔁 Monthly reporting? Too restrictive at first. Once it becomes routine, we can think about it.

🔄 The invoicing tool, an indispensable ally

For all non-retail companies, we strongly recommend using a professional invoicing tool, as it allows you to:

• To easily move from quotation to deposit, then to final invoice,
• Track payments in real time via a connection to your bank account.
• To automatically chase up customers who are late with their payments,
• Generate a simple and easy-to-read dashboard (even without accounting skills).

And even if you already have your tool: no worries.

Nous avons développé nos propres macros Excel pour transformer vos exports en Journal de Vente comptable prêt à intégrer dans notre logiciel.

🏪 Et pour les boutiques avec une caisse enregistreuse ?

💬 ‘My company is exporting, so that's fine, isn't it?’

Not quite. Contrary to popular belief:

• The cash registers do not print ready-to-use accounting entries.
• And most firms are still content to record just one entry per month, hoping that this will suffice during an audit.

❗ At our company, we have chosen to record each day, as required by the authorities. We have therefore developed our own Excel tools to integrate daily exports from your cash register, regardless of the model.

Why?

• Because if the accounts are rejected, the authorities are authorised to reconstruct the turnover themselves.
• And then... she doesn't mess about: she counts the number of towels, water consumption, square metres, stocks... with estimates that are always to your disadvantage.

🧾 Rigorous daily accounting simply protects you.