A spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down! And Stride is your spoon full of sugar and this blog is prescribing the medicine your company needs. Outsourcing your accounting needs can save you money and time.
Entrepreneur magazine places accounting as the number one most time-consuming task that should be outsourced.
Making big decisions is hard for many start-ups and small businesses. Don’t waste your time due to decision paralysis; educate yourself on outsourced vs. in-house accounting.
Cloud Accounting:
- Expertise – If you try to keep everything in-house then you are not letting experts take care of some of the most essential functions for your business to be successful.
- Real-time Access- Cloud accounting means you can have access to your financials anytime, anywhere.
- Industry Insight – An accounting firm is keeping their finger on the pulse of the industry as a whole by working with other companies.
- Saving Money – Doing things right the first time around, especially finances, can save your company a lot of money in the long run.
- Freeing up Your Time – As the business owner, you have the most important job of all- increasing your customer base and insuring the quality of your product or services.
In-House Accounting:
- A loss of insight – When you rely on just one bookkeeper or accountant, that person’s range of vision is limited to your company.
- Vulnerability – If your single in-house employee goes on vacation, maternity leave, medical leave, or simply quits, you would be placed in a vulnerable position to make sense of your own books, especially if something urgent came up.
- Internal Fraud – While you would like to trust everyone you’ve hired, employee fraud can be a huge financial burden for business owners.
According to Forbes magazine, decision paralysis is extremely prevalent. Managers/business owners should understand their role as a facilitator in the decision-making process and not just the final decision maker. It is important to rely on your team to fully engage them in the desired outcome of your decisions.
Below are some suggestions on how to avoid decision paralysis using the One-Three-Five approach:
- Pause and Ask One Good Question: Studies have shown that even pausing for one second can change the outcome of a decision.
Jack Grinband, Ph.D., associate research scientist in the Taub Institute and assistant professor of clinical radiology at Columbia university, purported, “Postponing the onset of the decision process by as little as 50 to 100 milliseconds enables the brain to focus attention on the most relevant information and block out irrelevant distractors.”
- Insist on Three Options rather than two. Some decisions can have enormous costs associated with them.
Remember a decision solution is not a single, rigid choice, but a collection of elements that can be recombined in many ways. Decision-making is not a “one and done” activity, it’s an ongoing process that should facilitate adaptation along the way.
- Talk to Five people:
72% of award-winning outcomes happen when people reach out and discuss their decisions with others who may have differing opinion such as people outside their inner circle of associates. You want innovative new thinking to guide your decisions and that means looking outside your team circle and perhaps industry.
At Stride, we love to keep you updated with business tips. We were voted as SF Weekly’s 2015 Best Accountant and we would love to handle all of your bookkeeping, accounting, payroll, and taxes needs.
