Getting to the top of any market requires impressive efficiency. If your business isn’t operating as efficiently as it could be, you might be able to look at bookkeeping as an area where you could improve.
Key Takeaways
- Most small businesses are inefficient with bookkeeping
- The ongoing nature of bookkeeping makes it a challenge
- It’s a time-consuming process
- Accurate books are essential to business growth
- Outsourcing solves all of these bookkeeping issues immediately
When you think about it, most markets are little more than an efficiency contest. The company that is able to operate the most efficiently in a given market – that is, the company that can effectively serve customers while cutting down on waste – is the one that is going to rise to the top. This is just as true for small businesses as it is for large corporations. Outsourced bookkeeping is one of the best ways to improve organizational efficiency, and that’s the topic we’d like to cover in this post.
As a business owner or manager, you already understand the importance of accurate bookkeeping and accounting. Trustworthy numbers are the heart and soul of sound decision-making, so having an accounting team that you can trust is essential. But does that accounting team have to be in-house? Absolutely not. Using an outsourced bookkeeping company is a great way to get the most value for your dollar without compromising anything on quality or accuracy. If you are still on the fence regarding the efficiency benefits available through outsourced bookkeeping, the discussion below should help make up your mind.
Why Bookkeeping Presents Efficiency Challenges
The very nature of bookkeeping makes it an inefficient task. There are many different inputs in the average bookkeeping process, and the work just keeps coming day after day. For every day that a business is open, there are sure to be some bookkeeping tasks generated based on revenues, expenses, or both. Without a tightly managed bookkeeping system that allows for the flow of information into the right place in the accounting software, it’s nearly impossible to get the results you desire without having it take over most of your time.
To emphasize just how much value outsourced bookkeeping can bring to a business, let’s take a moment to look at three of the difficulties that all businesses face in this area.
The Job is Never Done
As mentioned above, bookkeeping tasks just keep coming. Most other things in business have a degree of ebb and flow that allows you to catch your breath and regroup. For example, marketing is something that you will likely lean into with your full effort for a while, before taking a break to evaluate the previous campaign and get ready for the next. The same rhythm can be found in many other parts of an average operation.
The story is completely different from bookkeeping. Sure, there are going to be times when more sales than normal are recorded, or when there are extra expenses to record, but bookkeeping never stops entirely. Outsourced bookkeeping companies are so valuable because they are designed to endure this ongoing demand without any drop in performance. Good accounting services will have plenty of resources to keep up with the flow of financial data day after day, month after month.
It Simply Takes Time
The daily, persistent nature of bookkeeping is only further enhanced by the time-consuming reality of the work itself. With each receipt that comes in, a variety of pieces of information will be recorded, and even with good bookkeeping software on your side, it’s going to take a while. Using a tool like Quickbooks Online is a nice start toward efficiency, but tools will only go so far – as long as you are managing the bookkeeping on your own, it’s going to take a while.
Also, as any experienced bookkeeper knows, the time that this job takes is frequently expanded by missing information or problems with the receipts and reports that are received. Accounting outsourcing is a big help because accounting firms that are set up to handle bookkeeping services remotely will have a streamlined process for how any incorrect (or suspect) information is processed and reviewed by the right people. If you feel like you spend a lot of your time chasing down solutions to problems that you find in the books, an outsourced bookkeeping service will go a long way towards making that a pain point of the past.
Accuracy is Required
There is no room in business for inaccurate books. Managing the bookkeeping on your own, while doing a million other things at the same time, is a recipe for mistakes. On the other hand, using outsourced bookkeeping that is focused on only this singular task is an ideal way to make sure it is done right while saving yourself and your team a bunch of time along the way.
Financial statements aren’t worth the paper they are printed on if they can’t be trusted to be correct. By outsourcing bookkeeping, the errors will be removed from these ongoing reports, and you’ll suddenly have a newfound degree of trust in what they are telling you. Even if accuracy was the only thing that accounting services had to offer – and it isn’t – going with outsourced bookkeeping would be more than worth it.
Outsourced Bookkeeping Services Solve Problems
So far, we’ve painted a pretty grim picture of the bookkeeping landscape, but the story doesn’t have to be so dark. By switching to one of the best outsourced bookkeeping companies, you can eliminate many of the points of frustration and start to move forward in a much better direction.
When you trust remote bookkeeping services to handle this key part of your business, the following benefits can be enjoyed.
Cut Down on Admin Overhead
Lean on Professionals for Accuracy
Get Precisely the Right Assistance
Slay the Tax Preparation Monster
Tax preparation is a topic that few business owners even want to discuss. It’s an ongoing challenge for businesses to meet tax deadlines and file numbers that are accurate. Even if you have been using tax preparation services to handle this job, the task of providing that service with the information it needs to get the job done probably took you a lot of time and cost you plenty of frustration.
Things get a lot better when you use outsourced bookkeeping regularly and already have a team in place to take care of tax prep when the time comes. The financial data you are using the file those taxes will be accurate and already available thanks to your bookkeeping services, so you will no longer sweat tax season like you have been doing for years.
