In 2014, GoDaddy.com surveyed 600 small business owners and found that 40 percent of the surveyed group considered bookkeeping and taxes the most unpleasant part of owning a small business. While you may question why only 40 percent feel this way, no business has its roots in a desire to deal with bookkeeping issues and to pay taxes. For those business owners in the petroleum, service and energy industries, back office and tax issues can become an even more prominent challenge.

Businesses in these industries tend to run on tight margins and tax regulations can become rather challenging to comprehend. On top of that, if the company operates in multiple states and carries different products, the regulations become even more difficult to decipher. Today, there are approximately 17,000 different taxing jurisdictions in the United States. Most of these businesses do not have the staff, knowledge or resources to manage these tasks effectively.

Rather than struggling through managing these issues daily, today’s business owners would be better served to begin using a back office system that is automated and will help them to manage their financial health and tax issues throughout the year. By choosing the right system, a business can find a solution that automates the calculation, reporting and remitting of taxes. These systems can also help to reduce the errors generated by too much human intervention in the process.

So what are some characteristics that a small business owner in one of these industries should look for in their back office system?

  1. Low- Maintenance: As tax laws change, the system should be very simple to manage and update. Also, the system should not simply delete outdated information. While the old tax information may no longer be valid, it was at a time. This information may be important to be able to access at a future time.
  2. Comprehensive: Ensure that the system can handle multiple jurisdictions and tax regulations. For a company that offers home heating oil, propane and HVAC products and services in multiple localities, the owner should not have to struggle to keep track of taxes on different products in those different localities.
  3. Easy to use: The business owner and his or her staff should not be required to commit hours and hours to handling tax compliance and bookkeeping issues. The system should not be disruptive to the operation of the business.
  4. Strong support: The provider of the back office system should not disappear after the company begins to use the product. There should be a strong customer support effort on behalf of the system provider for those times when the user does struggle with processes or changes.

While back office tasks and tax compliance will never be a popular part of running a business, there is no reason that the tasks cannot made a little easier. By taking advantage of technology and automation, small business owners can focus more of their time on actually operating their business. If you run a business in the petroleum, convenience store, service or energy industries, contact Structured Management Systems today about their EnergyElite line of back office solutions and get back to building your business.