5 Steps to Find the Best Bookkeeping Services for Small Business
Bookkeeping is an integral element of every small and medium scale business. It is primarily concerned with paying bills, compliance, credit cards, payroll processing, employee records, bill payment, invoice record and much more to streamline the operations of any company.
That’s the reason, it is important to invest some time to select the right small bookkeeping services for your business. In order to find the best bookkeeping experts, you need to explore and follow the basic steps that help determine your needs, what tasks to keep, getting referrals, decide between virtual and local firm, recognizing quality candidates, and asking the right questions, etc.
Here we have enlisted some common steps to find the best bookkeeping services for small business.
- Determine your need
Determining your business needs is the first step in finding small business accounting services. Whether you are selling your products and need to track inventory, or you must pay to contractors or employees, bookkeeping services will help to manage all the things.
- Keep track of your income and expenses
Every small business needs to keep track of their basic income and expenses. It involves downloading all bank and credit card transactions to accounting software and through accounting software, all income and expenses are categorized to appropriate accounts, it also includes reconciling of the accounts on a monthly basis.
- Accounts Receivable
You will need to create invoices, manage customer payments, and follow-up on unpaid invoices if you are providing goods and services to customers on credit. For this, you must have the expertise to manage all these activities or you must choose a good bookkeeping services firm.
- Accounts Payable
An in-house expert or a local bookkeeping service will be required to manage track of unpaid bills or to write a cheque for payments. You will need to provide your bookkeeping services company your A/P aging report to make sure your open accounts payable balances are included in your monthly financial report
- Managing & Tracking Inventories
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- To sell the products, the ability to track quantities and costs of all purchases and sales is required. This also includes creating purchase orders, receiving products into inventory, and recording inventory adjustments as required. It is very important to provide your virtual bookkeeping services a report which shows inventory quantities.
- Financial Statement Reports
It will be very beneficial for your company to hire a bookkeeping service for accurate financial statement reports.
- Processing of Payroll
An in-house bookkeeping service or a local firm will be best to manage inventory and payroll processing. Many bookkeeping services will take your activity reports and include them in the monthly financial report.
- Determining What Tasks to Keep In-House
An in-house bookkeeper will help to manage account receivables and many other tasks that you want to keep in-house. This will help to maintain a good customer relationship by managing customer billing and payment collection. If you don’t have a bookkeeper on staff, then consider hiring a full-time bookkeeper to handle all features of your book or you can also give administrative tasks to your existing employee.
Here are three main areas that your tax professional should focus on Accounting software, the account setup chart, and their preferred communication method.
- Accounting software: Two types of software are in use these days Quick books and Proprietary software. Quick books software is more common than proprietary software. If your accountant is not familiar with the proprietary software just give them the reports, you need to prepare your tax return.
- Account setup chart: Tax professional should provide their standard list or review your chart of accounts before bookkeeping services start recording transactions.
- Preferred communication method: the best method is to give full access to your CPA or tax preparer to your data so he can get information without interruption.
- Virtual Vs Local Bookkeeping Services
Virtual bookkeeping services are best for cash base accounting, and for those who have a tight budget. Local bookkeeping services are best for those companies that use the accrual accounting method. Virtual bookkeeping services are budget friendly while local bookkeeping services are pricier.
- Find a reliable service provider
There are 3 best resources to find the best bookkeeping service for small business.
- Trade association: It is a great resource to find out the best bookkeeping service or bookkeepers.
- Professional organizations: Another important resource to find out the great bookkeeping services for your small business is professional organizations.
- Make connections with other small business owners: A very important resource that is overlooked by small business is to have a talk with other small business owners to see what kind of bookkeeping services they are using to manage their activities. Find out how they have found that bookkeeper.
- Meet Your Bookkeeping service finalists
Prepare a list of questions to ask during an interview with the bookkeeper. These questions will help you to find out the expertise of the company. Ask them about their communication method and charges. Do some research to find out how long each company has been in business.
There are still lots of important factors that involve in the growth of your small business. Following the aforementioned steps can help you tackle different financial aspects. So, just make sure you are considering the elements before choosing any service provider for your small business.
