Every business needs accurate and up-to-date financial information. Trusting the information in your P&L, A/R, A/P, cash flow, and balance sheet reporting is essential to making sound business decisions. While we all like to believe we can “trust our gut” when faced with uncertainty, reducing that uncertainty as much as possible can be the difference between barely surviving (or not!) and thriving. So yes, you do need a competent bookkeeper at the very least.
Many business owners try to handle the books themselves. They feel like it saves them money and gives them a more intimate understanding of their finances. I suppose they feel its worth the tradeoff in time that could otherwise be spent with customers, employees, vendors, family, etc. Nine times out of ten this is a big mistake.
Unless that business owner has previous accounting/bookkeeping experience the information will most likely suffer, and even if it doesn’t, the value add of spending additional time with the business’s various stakeholders would far exceed the money saved or any insights gained from diving into the financial minutiae of the business.
Your bookkeeper can provide daily/weekly/monthly reporting to keep you abreast of the business and any potential issues. They can also provide insights into your business that you might miss. After all, you should be hiring an expert that is working and/or has worked with many other businesses.
Although you may think you save money by doing everything yourself, the fact is that a professional bookkeeper actually saves you more. That’s because there is a reduced level of risk for human error, lack of knowledge, missed payments and tax obligation due dates, and delayed accounts receivable.
Plus, your time is money that you could be using toward improving your business operations and bringing in the revenue to move to the next level.
Here is an article with some more information for you to consider. A quote from the article:
“Bookkeeping is an essential role that every business owner should be able to handle, and he should enlist the help of someone who can take care of this task if he cannot. You don’t necessarily have to hire an accountant or in-house bookkeeper to do this for you. Many business owners outsource their bookkeeping needs instead.”
FLX Business Services would welcome the opportunity to talk with you about improving your bookkeeping and helping your business thrive!