More and more people are recognizing that bookkeeping is about more than just tax. Keeping track of your books all year around can provide a company with critical information in order to make key business decisions. Not to mention, if your company wants a loan it is going to need its books in order. The follow article provides information on bookkeeping services.
Should You Outsource Your Bookkeeping?
The answer to this question depends on a lot of factors. If you currently don’t have anyone taking care of your books, then outsourcing may be an easy choice. However, if you have an internal accountant performing your accounting and bookkeeping services then you will want to consider this person’s well-being. If you outsource the accounting, the person will be out of a job.
However, business is business. Sometimes a company can save quite a bit of money by outsourcing because they now don’t have to pay the bookkeeper’s salary and other benefits. It is a tough decision that you’ll have to make as the business owner.
One advantage to outsourcing your bookkeeper services is that it will allow your company to focus on what it does best. This can free up a lot of time that is much needed in growing organizations.
One disadvantage of having an outsourced bookkeeper service is that you are no longer in complete control of all your company’s valuable financial information. If the outsourcing service is sloppy with your information then it could fall into the wrong hands.
Price of Bookkeeping Service
The price of keeping your books in order will vary dramatically depending on the size of your company. If you run a small business then you could probably pay an accounting student around $10 an hour for 10-20 hours a week to keep track of your financial information.
For a larger corporation you will likely need several full-time CPA’s to keep track of everything and make sure that information is being tracked so that it can be presented in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP).
Other Tidbits
Another thing you will want to look for with a bookkeeping service is how much experience the bookkeeper has. It is not always necessary to hire someone with lots of experience (in fact in some cases it is a bad idea because you will have to pay them more and they will be doing work that they feel is below them). If you have already been running the bookkeeping at your company and just want to hand it off to someone then I would recommend looking for someone with little or no experience. You won’t have to pay them much and you can train them how to keep track of the books (it isn’t rocket science).
However, if you don’t know the first thing about bookkeeping and accounting then you will want to hire a bookkeeper with more experience. You’ll have to pay more, but a more experienced bookkeeper will help get a system in place that will be vital to your organization.
If your company is small or just starting then I would recommend going with some relatively inexpensive software. Quickbooks is a good option because it is well respected and any bookkeepers you hire will be able to figure out how to use it quickly (if they don’t know already).
In summary, finding a bookkeeping service is more important to an organization than was previously thought. Outsourcing can be a good option, but make sure to consider both the benefits and the costs; you might save money but destroy a friend’s life. If you already know how to keep track of accounting information, be careful about overpaying for someone with experience (you can easily train a student to do it for cheap). However, if you have no idea about accounting then hire someone who can set up a system for you.
