Why You Should Hire a (Virtual) Bookkeeping Firm
Bookkeeping is the process you use for recording and classifying your accounting transactions. It covers the terms and techniques that you use and can become extremely time-consuming for small business owners, or organizations that are experiencing rapid growth.
Making an outside hire for your bookkeeping needs can feel like a challenge, but it doesn’t have to be impossible! If you are considering an investment in additional bookkeeping resources, here are three reasons why you might want to consider outsourcing your bookkeeping to a virtual bookkeeping partner.
You have reached a resources limit
Most small business owners end up doing everything themselves. This can lead to constant evaluation of resources. Some of the limits that small business owners experience are, time, lack of knowledge, lack of experience, or the capital requirements to hire a full-time employee.
In a larger business, and in businesses where growth is occurring rapidly, it is especially important for an organization to understand their cash-flow, to categorize their liabilities, and to manage their outgoing expenses with accuracy and transparency.
Hiring a service like Bookkeeper Pros could give you the immediate bookkeeping experience you need, without the cost of paying for health insurance, benefits, or other employee-related costs. Even a part-time hire may not have the right balance of experience, workload, and efficiency.
DIY Bookkeeping is too complicated
For you DIY’ers, you may have created a complicated system that is built on Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel. These can be powerful tools to help with evaluating assets and liabilities and can help to keep transactions and records classified with accuracy and a high level of customization. Or in some cases, it may be that it has become too complicated or time-consuming to maintain. Some of the potential limitations of using these two solutions for your bookkeeping needs are as simple as the level of proficiency that can be required. As new assets are added (accounts, revenue sources, real estate and more), and as more liabilities are incurred, the challenge of maintaining your bookkeeping in a platform like Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel becomes amplified.
Many business owners and organizations will seek a bookkeeping software solution such as: Quickbooks or Xero. For a more expanded list checkout Capterra’s list of the best accounting software.
While we highly recommend using a business accounting software solution it also significantly increases the need for platform proficiency. This can prove to be an extremely costly skillset to hire for. Hiring a full time (or even part time) accounting software expert, especially one who has specialized experience will cost small businesses more money.
Hiring an outside bookkeeping firm can help you to have more flexibility and freedom in selecting the right business accounting software for your needs, without the limitations of one individual’s knowledge or experience with that software.
Business accounting software solutions have a wide range of complicated features. While this can be a benefit, it can also result in added confusion for those who are trying to “do it themselves” complexity. A robust set of features could lead to a steep learning curve and the potential of paying for features that aren’t being used.
Hiring an outside bookkeeping solution like a virtual bookkeeper can help to shortcut the learning curve, and ensures that the features you are paying for are actually being utilized to their fullest potential.
It costs time and money to identify (and then correct) accounting mistakes
There’s an old adage that time is money. For small businesses, this is especially true. There is a tradeoff between the time that is spent with accounting and bookkeeping and time that can be invested in growing the business. Most businesses didn’t start on the strength of the owner’s bookkeeping or accounting competency.
Larger organizations with small teams may also find that their own processes and procedures are creating an internal information bias. This can lead to a lack of perspective, poor communication or decision making, or mistakes that compound.
Hiring an outside firm not only gives valuable, third-party perspective, it also ensures that mistakes are quickly identified and corrected by highly specialized and highly trained bookkeeping professionals who spend hours reconciling bookkeeping errors, and who are adept in recognizing and correcting bookkeeping mistakes.
The result is an efficient partnership that frees up time for business owners and organizational executives to get back to strategizing, planning and executing on decisions that impact the bottom line.
CONCLUSION
Hiring a bookkeeping firm for your bookkeeping needs is a smart decision that will allow business decision-makers to have more time, and to make quick and accurate decisions. When selecting a business accounting software solution, consider a virtual bookkeeping partner like Bookkeeper Pros to manage the platform. The result will be a quick identification and correction of bookkeeping errors and accounting mistakes.
If you are looking for a trusted partner to minimize errors, empower quicker business decisions and run the business accounting software you’ve purchased with expertise, let’s talk. Fill out the contact form, or drop us a line in the chat.