What is the right time to hire a bookkeeping service provider? Preferably, you need some experienced personnel to handle your financial day-to-day tasks immediately after you start your new business. Having a professional bookkeeper can ideally help you concentrate on running and developing your startup and focus more on what you are best at.
Yes surely, bookkeeping can be managed without the need of having an external team of bookkeepers. Many people do this to save money. You may also think the same being a startup; hang back!
You are a startup founder with many important things to handle; creating a powerful vision for the customers, appointing and maintaining the best talent, build a team of trained executives, take care of fundraising, develop and follow new business plans, and more.
This implies, sooner or later you won’t be able to give your bookkeeping service the attention it requires. The more you grow the more paperwork and receipts you will get to manage.
Owing to this fact, your company’s expenses may not get tracked due to late bill payments and delayed invoice submissions.
The bookkeeper’s position is the most critical one of all the accounting jobs to business success, especially to the startups. Having a professional bookkeeper can be the best option to get accurate business reports, and manage your cash flow. A bookkeeper will not only save your time but will also share the warnings and insights with you.
How to hire an experienced bookkeeper?
The first thing you need to do is decide if you want to hire an in-house bookkeeper or outsourcing can suit you better. Moreover, also consider if you want a full-time service or part-time.
Being a startup you may initially not need the service excessively; in this situation, you can consider the temporary-to-hire bookkeepers. You can contact your local specialized staffing company or simply use the online search engine. List down at least three to four best candidates and employ the one that fits your needs.
Duty of Bookkeepers
Bookkeepers have the best problem-solving abilities that help them to tackle discrepancies, and their communication skills offer easy-to-understand reports. Their soft skills make them work well with your vendors, suppliers, customers, and other in-house team members. The key duties of a bookkeeper are-
- Reconciling bank report
- Processing payroll
- Recording accounts receivable and account payable
- Managing journal entries
- Operating month-end closings
- Monitoring fixed assets
- Creating depreciation schedules
Identifying the right person
Experience is relevantly more important to check than the duration of it. Practices differ from industry to industry. So, consider the track record when hiring a bookkeeper. An individual bookkeeper, for instance, having the experience of serving some specific retailers only, may not be the right person to perform the same job for an air-conditioning company.
Also, stay assured that the bookkeeper you are signing is experienced to work with the recordkeeping system and accounting software your company is accustomed to, if not you may need to train him/her.
To review if the bookkeeper is capable enough to show up the effective work in your industry, ask to provide you with the information about previous experience, primary responsibilities in the previous company, sorts of financial reports the person has previously prepared, and the accounting system he/she is familiar with.
Knowing that the bookkeeper can perform well
A trained and professional bookkeeper will maintain your books in the right way and will keep them clean, clear, and understandable for you to review and query the recorded entries.
On the other hand, a bad one can jeopardize your situation by maintaining messy records and moreover can get elope at the time of the first independent audit.
So, diligently ask the bookkeeper to provide you reference checks from the accountants who have grouped with him/her. Your special attention to this detailed information will get the impression on which candidate could be honest and reliable to hire.
Ask the individuals several questions and try to find out if anyone has claimed credit for the bookkeeping job the person has performed; if anyone has challenged his/her trustworthiness; and if any sort of mistake has been committed by the candidate.
Also, ask the person to showcase to you the right options he/she has followed in response to the situation.
Reasons to hire a professional bookkeeper
The key reason for having professional bookkeeping help is peace of mind. Being a startup, you by any means will have a lot of areas to manage. Your busy schedule and lack of knowledge are likely to create several mistakes in the financial records. So, having professional bookkeeping services for small business is beneficial in many other ways also.
- Professional services providers are experienced to complete the task with fewer mistakes. Professionals know the right ways to fix errors if mistakes occur in financial transactions. They can, indeed, avoid them. Their services can save you money by helping you pay out the taxes before the deadline, and can also help you get your invoices paid faster and more effectively.
- Professionals can help you with all sorts of numerical clarifications. Having them means getting someone to resolve the irregularities you may have observed or your company’s profit and loss you may not be sure about, or any other kind of matters related to small business bookkeeping.
- Professional help can benefit you with a simple tax season. Bookkeepers will never let you have any uncategorized expenses. And lastly will not let you miss the tax write-offs.
Bookkeepers vs. Accountants
Bookkeepers maintain day-to-day records of receipts, invoices, and other financial transactions. Accountants, on the other hand, provide you with the best business insights predicated on the bookkeeping information. They in general, shed light on any complex data and analyses through the duties namely establishing profit-and-loss reports and filing taxes.
If your startup business doesn’t need more help in recording every bit of the financial transaction, hiring a bookkeeper can be the right option. But, if you want to have high-level business-related advice and official reports, search out for an accountant.
Whether it is about saving time and money or focusing on the expertise and huge cash flow, bookkeepers make the perfect sense to have for your startup. So, move ahead and start the hiring process of bookkeeping in Etobicoke. The best of all ways of hiring a reliable bookkeeper is to search online or ask your known ones to offer you some local nearby referrals.
At Billah and Associates, our team of professionals believes in helping our clients develop themselves and find more time to concentrate on other areas of their startup. We work to serve the best interest of our customers, reduce their tax burden, and let them maintain the areas they are best at.
