Bookkeeping is undoubtedly one of the activities that no business can do without. Quite simply, it’s not possible to run a business without keeping accurate financial records. Even an apparently small error in our books can produce catastrophic effects, preventing those mistakes takes time and effort on your part. When you’re running a growing business, however, your time is at a premium, and with all of your responsibilities, it’s not uncommon for daily bookkeeping tasks to drop to the bottom of your to-do list. So it’s not surprising that many businesses are now outsourcing their bookkeeping to virtual accountants.
The decision of whether to outsource can be difficult one, especially for a small business that needs to be careful about taking on additional expenditures. Here are some of the benefits of outsourcing bookkeeping to factor into your decision-making process.
Freeing up your time
Many small business owners try to manage all aspects of the company’s operations from soup to nuts. Bookkeeping can be extremely time consuming, and including it in your seemingly endless list of responsibilities can force you to work 7 days a week, and keep you from better and more valuable uses of your time. Outsourcing bookkeeping frees up time you could be using elsewhere. And who knows, you might even be able to enjoy a day off again.
Outsourced bookkeeping solutions are scalable
You can keep your books on your own when you’re starting up your business, but sooner or later, you’re going to outgrow that solution. Likewise, you can hire a bookkeeper to work in your office. Eventually, though, the workload will be greater than one person can handle, at least at busy times like when you’re running payroll or at the end of the month, and you can’t really hire another bookkeeper just for those times. With an outsourced bookkeeping solution, you’ll have access to a full team of professionals. They’ll expand or contract the size of the team assigned to your books on the fly as needed, and you won’t have to hire or train new staff members.
Best of breed software
It can be quite a task to stay on top of all the latest financial software, choose the tools which are best for your business, and not to mention keep it all updated. What’s more, staff bookkeepers don’t really have an incentive to research these tools, especially when they know that it could put them out of a job. Not so with outsourced bookkeepers, whose livelihood depends on knowing all the latest and most efficient software, which you get the benefit of as part of your contract for their services.
Your financial data remains private and secure
Your financial records are among the most guarded possessions of your business, and you certainly don’t want to risk having any of that sensitive data leak out. Yet in many businesses that mission critical data is left in the hands of low level employees, who probably have access to your blank checks as well. When you outsource your bookkeeping to an established virtual accounting team, you can rest assured that your private information is not only in good hands, but also that it’s protected with state of the art security technology.
