How do you choose the right bookkeeper for your business?
Do you go in-house? Do you ask another business owner or a colleague for a referral? Do you search on Google and just go with one of the top answers?
It can be a real game of hit and miss and I have personally met business owners who have learnt a valuable lesson from not understanding what to look for in a bookkeeper.
How do you decide which option is best for your business and more importantly, how do you find out? Here’s our quick, 4-step guide to helping you understand what to look for.
The first step is to evaluate your current systems and processes. Who’s doing your books now? How long does it take? If you applied an hourly rate, how much is that costing?
Once you’ve got an idea of current time & costs, the next step is to think about the current limitations or issues you have. Perhaps you’re still invoicing with excel, perhaps you’d like to access your accounts in the cloud. Perhaps you’re often confused by GST amounts and unclear how to prepare your BAS. Regardless of what pain points you have, it’s great to have them written down because these should be addressed when deciding on who to engage to look after your books.
Thirdly, is your potential new supplier or current bookkeeper actively looking for ways to save the business money? For example, for those that use their personal car for work purposes you may have read our blog on ways to record its usage and to potentially save money and record this as a business cost – this is the type of thing we, at The Bookkeeping Store, are always on the lookout for. Don’t be afraid to ask, how can you save us money? What experience do you have in our industry? You can then always apply potential cost saving suggestions against the cost of the service in the first place.
Lastly, software. It’s really important you’re across the software, at least in a basic sense, because it will enable you to have all your business financial information at your fingertips. We use Xero and we are a certified advisor with Xero, but there’s also MYOB, Quickbooks and quite a few others. We think Xero is the best – particularly for small business – because it’s easy to learn and very intuitive.
If you factor in these 4 basic points when choosing your new bookkeeper, be-it external or outsourced to a team a bit like us, you’re sure to alleviate the traditional headaches associated with bookkeeping and potentially save time & money.
If you’re local to the Inner West in Sydney, which is where we’re based, we’re happy to meet and discuss some of these options with you.
