This concise guide quickly outlines the benefits of finding a small business bookkeeper to streamline your financial processes and procedures, and how one can improve your bottom line.
Whether you’ve just launched your dream project or are running a small business with a small team, wearing numerous organisational hats at all times, it’s time you got some help. The ‘jack of all trades, expert of none’ approach doesn’t always seem to work, especially when you have a lot of money at stake. If you are a rising entrepreneur or you wish to be one, hiring a professional small business bookkeeper is one of the most important decisions you’ll make.
How a small business bookkeeper can help
Still not convinced? Keep reading further to find out the benefits of hiring a professional small business CPA or bookkeeper for your business.
Save Time
When managed on their own, financial tasks are time-consuming and challenging; monthly bookkeeping is a task and takes a lot of time and effort. When it comes to organising yourself and your day-to-day tasks, we all would agree that bookkeeping is definitely at the bottom of that list. The nightmare becomes a reality when you look up and find your tax filing date and deadline closing in. It is then when you have no other choice but to search through all records to file taxes.
Your own tax advisor is an important point of contact for all small businesses. It is all the more important that communication with him is efficient. Proper bookkeeping is an important prerequisite for this, as is the complete and orderly submission of receipts and documents. Accounting programs make it possible to give the tax advisor direct access to the relevant documents and / or to transmit them online. That saves time, effort and postage.
While your competitor is busy defining new strategies to take over the market, you are stuck with bookkeeping to file your taxes and wasting your precious time. Instead of spending the time you spent on the tedious financial task, you could have worked on improving your business strategy, customer retention strategy, customer support and service, and general improvement of your product and business.
Always Pay on Time
Were you missing your monthly bill deadlines? You know it comes with a late surcharge fee. That’s like putting a hole in your pocket yourself. It may affect your business goals and cash flow as well. A small business bookkeeper will organise all bill payments for you.
Having a small business bookkeeper means that you will no longer have to worry about missing deadlines, and to pay extra, your bookkeeper will make sure that he has set reminders for your monthly payments. This would save you money and time, of course.
Identify Cash Flow Issues
A small business bookkeeper will know to keep a log of all your day-to-day records, including invoices, receipts, and other transactions. Since they know all about your expenses and income, the bookkeeper will always watch the cash flow. They would be able to warn you of any unforeseen situation related to cash flow.
Your business’s detailed attention and grasp will enable the bookkeeper to be diligent and inform you of any cash flow issues in time. This will help you understand your business performance even better.
Focus on Business Growth
A deep dive into your business income and monthly expenses will give you a better understanding of your business and a grip on your financial situation. You will be able to make business decisions that would impact your business positively. A bookkeeper will keep an eye on all financial aspects of your business that will give you the liberty of focusing one hundred percent on your business expansion and improvements.
Avoiding errors
The typical mistakes of small business self-employed and freelancers include careless handling of invoices and receipts. This comes back to bite you at the latest with the tax return. In addition, official retention periods apply to many documents.
That is why it makes sense to keep invoices, customer correspondence and receipts securely in one central location. Anyone using accounting software can save important documents digitally. So everything is always easy to find and close at hand. Otherwise, a folder is recommended – or even better, several.
Six areas of bookkeeping
For a clear bookkeeping, classification into six areas is recommended, whether digital or in paper form:
Cash flow: All cash receipts and cash expenditures are noted here and documented with the corresponding receipts.
Banking: This may involve several accounts.
Invoices to customers: the name speaks for itself.
Invoices received: These can be, for example, invoices from suppliers.
Credit card statements: Credit card statements should also be filed with the associated receipts.
Sales tax returns and accounting evaluations: Both items together provide an overview of income and expenses and how much money the tax office receives.
The same adage about good organization applies here: order pays off. Whether bank statements, invoices or receipts for cash expenditures, a chronological sorting is mandatory in order to keep an overview. It also makes work easier for tax advisors.
Maintain a business account
Small businesses in particular are tempted to combine their business and private accounts. After all, a business account costs money and at first appears to be superfluous. In reality, however, it makes sense, even for self-employed people who are just starting out and who still earn little money, to separate private and business finances
Otherwise, at some point there will be the tedious task of checking all payments to see whether they are business or private. That takes time. In addition, there is a risk of losing track of one’s own liquidity in this way.
What about small business bookkeeper software?
Of course there is the possibility of doing your own bookkeeping with an Excel document or even with pen and paper, but modern bookkeeping programs make the job easier. There are two basic variants to choose from:
- Fixed installation software
- Accounting tools in the cloud
The second has the advantage that you are independent of time and place. This is particularly important for self-employed people who travel a lot. Whether permanently installed or in the cloud, your own needs should be in the foreground when choosing. Freelancers require fewer features than medium-sized companies. Most accounting tools come in a variety of forms. If you only take what you need, you usually save money.
The Bottom Line
If you wish to maintain your financial records with the utmost accuracy, professional bookkeeping experts for your business like Walker Hill is a must for your organisation. With their expertise, you’ll have enough time to work on strategies that put your brand on the right pathway.
Bookkeeping for small business owners is not rocket science. But every beginning is difficult. If you have difficulties getting started or if you lose track of things, it makes sense to get support from a small business bookkeeper service. In this way you can be sure that your accounting is in good hands and you have more time for the essentials.
