In-house Bookkeeper or 3rd Party Bookkeeper… Bookkeeper for Business Advice

Multi-tasking is an everyday occurrence in businesses and is in most cases a necessity in order to get things done in a timely fashion. Author Steven Berlin Johnson describes multitasking as “skimming the surface of the incoming data, picking out the relevant details, and moving on to the next stream.” Skimming is what people do when they look at their receipt when leaving the grocery store, not what you do when balancing your company’s checkbook and reviewing P&L data. Here is some bookkeeper for business advice.

When deciding what is better for your business, ask yourself if consolidation of daily tasks is the answer. Do you want your in-house bookkeeper answering the phones, assisting clients, or doing HR all day ON TOP of the bookkeeping? Probably not! The assembly line automation was popularized by Henry Ford. The idea was that “hiring a specialist to perform a specific function creates a lot of efficiency.”

Things to consider about a bookkeeper for business:

• This 3rd party service is a vendor that can be replaced. They want your business, so it is implied that there will be an expected level of customer service in order to keep the account.
• Bookkeeping services are like any other business. They compete and they need to stay ahead of their competition in order to win accounts. They do this by constantly setting themselves apart and creating innovative ways to provide you efficient and accurate service.
• Consistency. If something happens to your in house bookkeeper, what is the protocol? One day, maybe two days is manageable. But what happens if it’s longer than that, or they just up and quit? Bookkeeping services have built in processes to handle this and it is off of your plate so that you will get the SAME level of service no matter who your representative is.

Think of what tasks you have on a daily, weekly, monthly, or even quarterly basis. As an employer, you are responsible for:

• Accurately calculating employee earnings and handing out paychecks
• Deciding on tax withholdings and payroll deductions
• Keeping current on new regulations, tax rates, filing of taxes, personnel issues and other payroll variables.

Beyond all of this, there is the small aspect of running, and ideally growing the business. Why waste your time on performing these functions when you could hand this off to someone like our friend Kandi Brem at www.Brembookkeeping.com, whose ONLY focus is making sure all of this is accurate and that the lights stay on. I am sure you can find better ways to use that time on things like improving your product or service, increasing revenue, and hiring talented employees.