We are almost to the end of tax season, and that means a few things around here. First, I’m tired.

Second, if you haven’t yet made a tax preparation appointment, it is time to file an extension. We will still be happy to help you with your taxes in the future, though, and setting an appointment to do so could be a good idea to help hold off any future procrastination.

Finally, we can also start to see beyond tax season. And with that long view, maybe tax time made you think that it is time to make some changes.

Did you wish you had kept better records? Did you wish you had a better handle on where your finances stood before the calendar turned? Sometimes these things are difficult to keep at the front of our mind when tax season is so far away, but being a little proactive as a constant rule can make those difficult times easier.

This is something that tends to come up more often with business clients than when doing individual taxes. One begins a business because they have a passion in some area, and that area is often not worrying about finances and bank statements (only a select few are crazy enough to do that). Keeping those things in order, however, is a critical part of running a successful business, and gives you the knowledge to help make sure the venture will thrive.

There are so many tools and technologies out there that can help with this. Determining which ones will most help your business depends upon what you’re doing and how big of a company you are, but there is something for everyone that will fit within your budget.

And it is not as if we are reaching any endpoint with those helpers, as improvements and updates are being made all the time. Some of these improvements, though, mean that some older things go away. This is happening on May 31 as QuickBooks 2015 will sunset and some of its functionality will no longer be supported. This does not mean that the software will suddenly stop working, but many pieces of it will no longer work. Some of these can be critical, including online banking and credit card processing. Essentially, if it is a feature that pulls in information from outside of the program, it is one that goes away.

This can be remedied by updating to the latest version of the program, and that moving forward taps into my overall point. If you keep making those little changes, continue being a little more proactive, and refuse to stay stuck in old ways, then you give yourself a better chance to grow.

When it comes to that upward trajectory, we would love to help you there, too. Sure, with the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act at the end of last year leading us right into tax season, that topic has dominated these blogs and the financial mind of many people. It is not all we do, though, and is not all that is involved in one’s financial picture. So now that the tax finish line is in view, don’t hide until next year, instead keep moving forward, and reach out if there is any way we can help you.