As soon as your business is up and running, you’re going to be dealing with numbers. It’s now time to find a bookkeeper to help you manage your books. But the question you’re asking yourself is: How can I find the right bookkeeping that I can trust to help me track and manage my finances?
Running a business in itself is no small task, but doing your own bookkeeping can be a nightmare if you have no idea what you’re doing. Tax laws are always changing and if you’re not keeping up to date with what these laws are, any mistakes that you make will result in time and money wasted.
When you sit down to find a bookkeeper, it comes down to 3 things.
Find a bookkeeper who is annoying
The right bookkeeper will keep communicating with you to collect all the financial documents needed to handle your books. As they are updating, reconciling everything, they should be reaching out to you constantly to make sure that they’re recording things correctly.
In addition to communicating with you, they’ll also make sure that your books never fall behind. One of the most frustrating things is come time tax and your accountant does not have all right documentation to file your taxes. It’s important to know that a bookkeeper and an accountant have different roles.
If you’d like to learn more about what these differences are, I suggest you check out this article highlighting key differences between a bookkeeper and an accountant.
In-house or Freelance Bookkeeper
Have multiple phone conversations where you test their knowledge and also for you to get a sense of their personality. It’s important to know if you’ll even be able to get along with that person.
There are services like Upwork where you’ll be able to find a freelance bookkeeper. Reviews and ratings are a huge part of their brand identity. So, doing a great job are a must for these bookkeepers so that they can keep getting more clients.
The downfall however is that the more clients a freelance bookkeeper has, the harder it’ll be for them to stay on top of everything.
So, you would want to make sure that this bookkeeper is well organized and will not allow your books to fall behind.
On another note, you have the option to also find a bookkeeper through an online bookkeeping service. Such service offers bookkeeping services by providing a dedicated bookkeeper to do your books along with a bookkeeping software.
Tax Oriented
To limit your tax liability, it’s very important to find a bookkeeper that is not only familiar with your industry, but also familiar with the different tax laws and how they affect your business.
Does education matter? Typically, a bookkeeper will have some sort of degree from an accredited college. While education is important, experience is even more important. Hiring a bookkeeper with little to no experience may have a negative impact on your business.
So, make sure that whomever you decide to hire to handle your books have the knowledge, education needed to handle the task of doing your bookkeeping.