Is it a good idea to do the bookkeeping for your business yourself, or should you hire a professional? The cheapskate in you might think it’s okay to do your own bookkeeping without hiring a professional. But if you don’t have the experience, knowledge, or time to do bookkeeping, you could set your business up for disaster.

As a business owner, you have enough to stress over without worrying about tending to your books daily. No one should expect you to have the mental strength to tolerate managing your business and keeping accurate books simultaneously.  

For this reason, it would be wise to hire a professional bookkeeper to oversee the daily bookkeeping of your business. Then you can focus all your attention on managing your business and achieving a high customer satisfaction rate.

Get Ready to Submit Your Financial Documents

Bookkeepers need access to your company’s most sensitive financial documents and information in order to do their jobs accurately and adequately. They may even need to access the account records of all the financial institutions connected to your company, such as banks, Stripe, PayPal, etc. Whichever financial institutions your company uses to send or receive money, your bookkeepers will need access to the records of your accounts with them.

Of course, it will require a great deal of trust before you feel comfortable handing over sensitive financial information to a bookkeeper. Since they will have to access your bank and payment accounts, it is the equivalent of giving them access to your company’s money.

That is why you’ll need to create contracts for your bookkeeper to sign before you provide them with access to these accounts. The contracts need an ethics clause regarding access to your company’s money. Then you can have some additional legal protection in case you hire the wrong bookkeeper and they misuse your money.

If you still don’t want to provide a bookkeeper with access to your financial accounts, you’ll need to provide your bookkeeper with the financial records from the accounts yourself. This means logging into your online banking account or Quickbooks account, downloading all the monthly transactions into a spreadsheet document, and giving it to your bookkeeper. Then you wouldn’t need to give up the login information of these sensitive accounts.

But do you really want to go through all this extra trouble? What’s the point of hiring a bookkeeper if you have to gather the financial records from these accounts yourself? The whole idea is to make your life easier by letting the bookkeeper do all these tasks for you. So, that is the dilemma you must think about for your business.

Tax Time

Entrepreneurs and small business owners habitually wait until tax time before gathering their financial documents and calculating their taxes owed. This creates a lot of stress and frustration for business owners because they are under pressure to perform all these complicated calculations before the tax deadline. It is even worse if the business owners are not good at math or don’t have the proper knowledge to calculate their taxes accurately.

Any responsible business person would hire someone to help them do these calculations all year. So don’t wait until January or until you need to file your tax return before hiring a professional bookkeeper. Instead, hire them well before the tax season begins because it’ll ensure the most accurate tax calculations and financial records are made for your company.

Furthermore, getting a jump start on your bookkeeping will allow you to create financial reports for analyzing the financial status of your business. Then you can do a better job of managing your company and making sound financial decisions throughout each year. Just ask your bookkeeper to send you the latest reports on demand, and they will deliver them promptly.

If you’re not an expert at reviewing financial reports, feel free to ask questions to your bookkeeper if you are confused about something on them. They can answer all your questions and ensure you understand the details listed in the reports. Once you get better at reviewing reports, you’ll start to notice whether your business is moving in the right direction or not.

A bookkeeper can help you figure out the following:

• Where your company spends money unnecessarily
• The products and services purchased that you don’t use
• The most popular products and services sold
• The most profitable products and services sold by your business
• The least profitable products and services sold by your business
• The services purchased which help your business make more money

When you get good at reviewing your company’s financial reports, you’ll know how to find all the information listed above regarding your business. Then you’ll know if your company is profiting or losing money.

Therefore, the best thing you can do is hire a bookkeeper. Not only will you receive more accurate financial information, but you can take substantial amounts of stress off your shoulders. Less stress means a more sound mind and the ability to make better decisions for your business.

Don’t wait until the last minute to do your company’s bookkeeping. Hire a professional bookkeeper before the tax season and keep them working for your company all year round. Then watch as your business grows more than ever before.

What to Expect

You’ll immediately recognize the return on investment after hiring a bookkeeper for your business. It’ll save you time and stress and give you access to accurate financial reports for analytical purposes.

The only thing you need to do now is to hire the best and most reputable bookkeeper possible. Good luck!