Running a business is all about making smart decisions. One such decision is picking the right outsourced bookkeeping company to serve your needs. This page will dive into the details of making that choice successfully.
Key Takeaways
- Start be clearly understanding what you need from an outsourced bookkeeping company
- Explore the market to see what the options look like
- Think about who is going to handle your taxes
- Only consider companies that make communication open and easy
- Discuss what your future needs will look like and how the bookkeeping company can adapt
Have you been considering making a switch to outsourced bookkeeping services to save your business both time and money? That’s a great idea, to be sure, but there is one big question remaining – which company is right for your needs? In this post, we’ll help you understand how to sort through the available accounting services on the market today to pick out the right fit as quickly as possible.
To jump right into action and talk with a qualified outsourced bookkeeping company that would be happy to fill this role for your business, reach out to Swiftbooks today. We have a proven track record in this industry and can offer outsourced accounting services for small businesses of all kinds. It all gets started with an initial call to go over your needs and our services, so feel free to get in touch and schedule that call as soon as possible.
Get a Handle On Your Needs
Before you can choose the right bookkeeping services for your business, you need to have a good understanding of what services will be required and what you can do without. Even if you haven’t previously outsourced bookkeeping work, you already know the basics of what your business needs to track day after day. Whether you do it yourself, or you currently have an in-house bookkeeper doing the job, it’s helpful to think about how that work will be transferred out to a third party service.
As an example, you might find that the biggest pain point for your business is simply keeping up with the flow of basic bookkeeping – accounts receivable and accounts payable. For a business that does a relatively high volume of transactions, even if the dollar amounts are modest, managing the daily books is a major chore. If you could solve this bottleneck by outsourcing bookkeeping, you’d have a great opportunity to streamline your operations.
So, for a company in this situation, it might not be necessary to use tax services or payroll from an outsourced accounting company. You might only want to lean on the basics of outsourcing bookkeeping while continuing to do the rest on your own, perhaps with the assistance of an existing accountant. On the contrary, you could opt to do everything through outsourced accounting services and turn over all of your accounting and bookkeeping, including financial reporting, to this new contractor. Get clarity on what work you will want done and it will be much easier to select the right outsourced bookkeeping partner.
Become Familiar with the Accounting Services Market
One of the issues that hold many business owners back from using outsourced bookkeeping is simply unfamiliarity with what is available and how this market works. Without an understanding of the accounting processes that outsourced bookkeeping businesses use to serve their clients, it might feel more comfortable – and just plan easier – to stick with what you know best.
Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to get to know outsourced bookkeeping contractors and how they work. The first step is to just spend some time on the website of a few providers to read through their services and the details of their workflow. You are already here on the Swiftbooks website, so you are certainly welcome to explore our pages to understand how we approach outsourced accounting. You’ll pretty quickly get a good idea of how accounting firms like Swiftbooks can easily and efficiently replace your internal accounting department and stand out among other outsourced bookkeeping companies.
Do You Require Tax Preparation Services?
For some small businesses, taxes are actually pretty simple. That doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy paying them, of course, but they might not require a ton of preparation. In other cases, however, certain types of businesses will have a ton of work to do in terms of tax preparation to make sure all of their ducks in a row and their filings are accurate and timely.
If you want to add tax prep to the list of services that you secure from your outsourced bookkeeping team, be sure to check for the availability of that service when you shop around. Yes, many companies provide this service in addition to other services like financial reporting, general bookkeeping, and streamlining accounting processes. That doesn’t mean it is offered by every accounting outsourcing firm, however, so it’s always best to check before you get into a relationship with a contractor that isn’t actually going to be able to serve all of your needs.
Place an Emphasis on Communication
First and foremost, you want to make sure that any accounting outsourcing option you work with is going to be able to serve your needs in terms of the services you’d like to retain. From there, it’s good to look at some other key points to make sure you’ve picked the right partner.
One key piece of the puzzle is communication. You’ll want to be sure that the contractor is going to maintain an open line of communication with you and will be easy to get in touch with when you need something. If their internal team is hard to get in touch with, and won’t answer your messages or calls, outsourced bookkeeping won’t live up to your expectations.
Fortunately, you can start to judge the kind of communication that will be offered by accounting firms before you agree to work with them officially. Schedule a call and make sure the outsourced bookkeeping team on the other side of the call is as engaged and present as you would like to see. Just getting a bit of digital face-to-face time to make sure they are excited to take on the challenge of your bookkeeping will go a long way toward putting your nerves at ease.
Think About the Future
Switching to outsourced bookkeeping will go a long way toward improving the way your business runs in the short term. But what’s even more exciting is what you can see in terms of the future that your business could open up now that you have a great plan in place for how your bookkeeping will be managed.
As you talk with accounting firms about taking on your account, be sure to discuss your goals for the future and how you might want to scale up the services that you retain. You want to partner with a company that can grow their accounting processes to keep up with your business and you can hopefully reach new heights together down the line.
Trust Our Outsourced Accounting Team
We understand that your financial reporting is a critically important part of business operations, and you can’t afford to have any mistakes in this area. For that reason, we hold our bookkeeping services to the highest of standards, and you can expect to get both reliability and accuracy from the accounting services we provide. Swiftbooks has already served countless businesses with our proven accounting and bookkeeping services, and we’d love to add the name of your business to that list. Take a moment to contact us today to learn more.
