How do you know if you need to hire a bookkeeper? Here are 10 signs it’s time for someone to take over your bookkeeping asap!
Does this sound like you? You own a small business that’s beginning to gain some traction. Your customer base is growing, and you’ve even been able to hire a few employees recently.
You’re working hard to keep everything running smoothly, but truth be told… you feel pulled in a lot of directions. And one of the biggest time-stealing culprits is bookkeeping.
Sound familiar? If so, here are 10 telltale signs that you need to hire a bookkeeper as soon as possible!
1. You have a box of business receipts tucked away in your drawer.
Be honest… do you do this?
If so, you’re not alone. But when you get to the end of the year and pull out that box of old receipts—you might want to cry a little bit.
When you’re disorganized with your bookkeeping throughout the year, it always comes back to haunt you come tax time.
2. You have employees and are struggling to keep up with payroll.
If you have only one or two employees, you may find processing payroll doesn’t consume too much of your time. But once your team starts growing, it can easily eat up many more hours of your monthly schedule.
As a business owner, you shouldn’t have to spend all that time counting pennies in payroll.
When you hire a bookkeeper, you don’t have to worry anymore about inputting new employee information, collecting and analyzing timesheets, calculating salaries and benefits, and tracking payroll records for year-end tax filing.
Employees get paid on time and you have fewer tasks on your plate. Everyone wins!
3. You’re up late into the night doing your monthly bookkeeping tasks.
You have dozens—maybe even hundreds—of transactions to go through and label.
On the one hand, it’s great that you’re getting so many customers and payments! On the other hand, it takes a lot of time to go through each transaction and reconcile your accounts.
Those are hours you could be investing in your business when you hire a bookkeeper.
4. You spend hours trying to find that one transaction that’s messing up your account reconciliation.
You go to reconcile your accounts but can’t seem to figure out why your bank statement is off by $68.35. So now your only option is to go line by line through hundreds of transactions to find the one that’s messing everything up.
Fun, right?
5. You don’t know how to categorize certain purchases, so you have a lot of transactions labeled “Uncategorized Expense.”
Labeling everything as an “Uncategorized Expense” may seem like a great temporary fix, but it does nothing to help you in the long run. It’s important to correctly categorize your expenses and income so that you can see what’s working for you and what’s not.
How can you create a solid financial plan for your business next year if your numbers aren’t giving you a clear picture of what’s going on?
6. Your Profit and Loss statement is consistently off, and you can’t figure out why.
You get your P&L and realize, Wait… that doesn’t look right. Why is my income off? And why are my expenses higher than I know they should be?
Something’s not right—and until it’s fixed, you’ll have a hard time optimizing your business finances.
7. You have no clue how to categorize your credit card payments.
This is a big deal.
If you don’t properly categorize your credit card payments, your accounting software might interpret them as income and expenses. This will certainly throw off your financial reports.
A bookkeeper who understands online accounting tools can make sure you’re correctly categorizing each credit card payment as a transfer.
8. You spend dozens of hours at the end of the year gathering reports, receipts, and tax forms.
A trained bookkeeper can help you gather these important documents ahead of time and save you a lot of stress.
Plus, they’ll tell you exactly what to gather so you don’t waste your time searching for something you don’t need. Trust us, no one wants to do that.
9. You know your business could grow much faster if you could devote just a few more hours to networking or strategizing.
Think of it this way—the hours you’re spending on your own bookkeeping are hours you could be spending on growing your business.
Many of our clients have seen great growth soon after hiring us because they suddenly had more time to devote to what they do best.
10. Your family time goes down the drain at least once a week because you’re trying to manage bookkeeping and run your business.
Often, bookkeeping is one of those tasks that you can’t find time for during the workday, but you know it needs to get done. So what happens? You end up doing it at home at the end of the day. And if you do it often enough, your spouse or kids might begin to complain.
What’s worse is that you feel guilty for not spending that time with your family. No one wins in that situation.
Fed Up Trying to Do It Alone? It’s Time to Hire a Bookkeeper
If any of these signs resonate with you, then it’s time to hire a bookkeeper and free up your schedule for what’s most important.
Often, small-business owners who want to do their own bookkeeping do so to save money. But at some point, every entrepreneur realizes that they’re losing money trying to do it by themselves.
That’s when they stop viewing hiring a bookkeeper as an expense to avoid and start seeing it as an investment to help them grow.
Is that where you are right now? If you’re ready to invest in quality bookkeeping, schedule a free consultation with us. We’d love to chat with you about your business needs!