Business owners are hesitant to outsource their business's bookkeeping because they are worried about losing control of the financial aspect of their business. It is a legitimate concern.
All along you have been handling the bookkeeping yourself. You know what is going on and you are intimately involved with the financial aspect of your business.
However, you have hit a crossroads and you are too busy to continue to put the time into growing your business and still maintain the bookkeeping. You think outsourcing your bookkeeping might be the solution you are looking for, but you have concerns.
Let me tell you how to outsource your bookkeeping and have it be a positive move instead of a hesitant move.
How outsourcing your bookkeeping will positively affect your business
Outsourcing your bookkeeping will benefit you and your business in many ways. First, by outsourcing to a professional bookkeeping service you will be sure that your books are being done correctly.
Your bookkeeping service should be able to produce a clean set of books for your CPA and reduce the amount of time they take to produce an accurate tax return.
In addition, hiring a bookkeeping service is cheaper than hiring an employee. A service will not come with additional costs such as payroll taxes, paid vacation, and benefits. You also will get multiple employees with a service and not just one bookkeeper.
A bookkeeping service will free up your time. Instead of spending your time updating your bookkeeping, you can spend time analyzing your financial statements to look for concerns and opportunities. You can spend your time growing your business and not be worried about updating your books.
Stay involved
The worst thing you can do it outsource your bookkeeping and then step away from it completely. You want to keep performing certain crucial tasks to keep you involved in the bookkeeping process.
While you may empower your bookkeeper to cut checks you should never give them the authority to sign checks. That is a big no-no! By having your bookkeeper cut checks but you are the one that signs them it does two things.
First, it keeps you involved with your business expenses so you have an idea of what is going on. Feel free to question any bills you are uncertain about. Secondly, by signing checks you are reducing the chance for fraud by your bookkeeper.
You should also stay involved with your bookkeeping by requesting certain reports on a regular basis and analyzing those reports. You should review them to make sure everything is in line with your expectations and to question them when things seem abnormal.
Again question anything that looks off or you don't recognize. When you are asking questions it creates a sense of awareness and keeps your bookkeeper on their toes.
Audit your bookkeeper
You should audit your bookkeeper. Take a look at the books when they are not around to make sure everything looks legit and correct. After all, you handled the bookkeeping in the past so you should know if they are correct or not.
Look over all checks, payments, and withdrawals from your bank accounts every month. Look for anything that looks suspicious. You would be surprised how many bookkeepers try to steal and you want to make sure your bookkeeper is not stealing from you.
Look over reports and the books in general with your bookkeeper and ask lots of questions. This again makes you appear involved in your bookkeeping process and reduces the chance of your bookkeeper trying to steal from you.
Also, by looking over the books you are staying involved and it will benefit you and your business in many ways.
You should be hesitant about outsourcing your bookkeeping; after all you are handing over the financial aspect of your business to someone. However, that should not stop you from outsourcing your bookkeeping.
You just need to stay involved in the bookkeeping process to ensure everything is running smoothly. Once you have your bookkeeping outsourced properly it will benefit your business in a number of ways, but mostly because you will have more time to dedicate to growing your business.
