How do you know it’s time to outsource your bookkeeping?
Many small-business owners will give you different answers. They may do it to feel more confident in their finances, to spend more time with family, or to focus more on growing their business.
In our experience as a bookkeeping company, we’ve noticed some trends among our clients regarding why they hire us. Check out the five most common reasons our clients outsourced their bookkeeping. Do any of these resonate with you?
1. Bookkeeping is taking time away from business growth.
One of our clients who runs a multimillion-dollar company did her own bookkeeping for three years. Her company was doing great, but bookkeeping took her a day and a half per week. That’s a week of bookkeeping per month!
After hiring us, she was able to increase her revenue by $5,000 a month because she was able to spend that time servicing her clients and focusing on revenue-building tasks.
Maybe your ROI won’t be that high when you hire a bookkeeper, but think about it: What business-growing steps could you take if you outsourced your bookkeeping?
2. Bookkeeping is taking away time from personal growth and rest.
Are you doing your bookkeeping on nights and weekends?
As an entrepreneur, Elizabeth’s mother had to use all her spare time to do bookkeeping. Nights, weekends, spare moments throughout the day—they all went to getting her accounting tasks done.
One client who hired us was able to take a full day and devote it to her favorite hobbies and crafts. She told Elizabeth with tears in her eyes, “I haven’t had a weekend where I did not spend it doing bookkeeping.”
Could outsourcing your bookkeeping help you better invest in yourself and your personal growth?
3. Your box of receipts and documents is giving your CPA a migraine.
There are few things as time consuming for a CPA than digging through your bundle of receipts and invoices to file your taxes. In fact, many CPAs will charge you extra if you bring them your financial information that way.
Just because you know how to do your own bookkeeping doesn’t mean you’re the best at it. A professional bookkeeper will make sure your reports and documents are organized in a way that will make your CPA do a happy dance!
Ask yourself: Is your CPA able to spend a significant amount of time on tax strategy? Or are they having to spend too much time cleaning up your books?
4. You’re not confident in your own bookkeeping.
Did you know that 29% of small businesses fail due to lack of capital and cash flow? And about 60% of small-business owners aren’t confident in finance and accounting.
Bookkeeping isn’t a simple checklist of tasks. It’s a web of interconnected transactions and accounts.
You can look up YouTube videos and blogs about QuickBooks and figure out a lot of the processes for yourself. But what if you make a change to a transaction and unknowingly change something else in your chart of accounts?
A professional bookkeeper knows how each part of the accounting web affects the other. You can have confidence that they’re managing and organizing your books in a way that’s accurate and correct.
5. You want to get a loan, but your Profit and Loss balance sheet is a mess.
Maybe you’re looking to purchase a new office building, invest in a new and costly growth strategy, or buy new equipment. If so, you probably need a loan. That becomes difficult, though, when your bookkeeping is messy.
For example, a trucking company recently came to us because they were growing and needed a loan to keep expanding, but the bank wasn’t happy that their Profit and Loss report wasn’t up to date.
Do you need to clean up your bookkeeping to prepare for growth?
How Do You Find a Bookkeeper?
Different bookkeeping companies may specialize in different types of businesses. We highly suggest that you interview several companies to determine which one would be the best fit for you.
You want to choose a company that is, first of all, responsible and good at what they do. But don’t underestimate the importance of rapport! You want to have a good relationship with the person who’s managing your finances.
If you can, try to meet with them for coffee (or virtual coffee!) and see if your personalities and work styles fit. That’s what we do here at Foray Business Group, and it has served us and our customers well!
Ready to outsource your bookkeeping? Or do you have questions about doing your own bookkeeping? Set up a coffee chat with us!
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