Bookkeepers are a necessity for any business today, and prudent business owners consider hiring one when their company reaches a certain size. There are a host of benefits to hiring a bookkeeper, but it can be difficult to know exactly what kind of person and service you should be looking for. These 5 fundamental questions can help alleviate these concerns and provide a good starting point for the hiring process.
Let’s first see what a bookkeeper is.
Table of Contents
What is a Bookkeeper?
A Bookkeeper is a person who is responsible for recording and maintaining a business’ financial transactions, such as purchases, expenses, sales revenue, invoices, and payments. They will record financial data into general ledgers, which are used to produce the balance sheet and income statement. The bookkeeper is generally responsible for overseeing the first six steps of the Accounting Cycle, while the last two are typically taken care of by an accountant.
In larger businesses, a bookkeeper is responsible for overseeing and reconciling hundreds of financial transactions. This is typically done with the assistance of various software systems, and for this reason, technology literacy is incredibly valuable for the profession.
What services can you expect?
When hiring a bookkeeper, it is paramount to acutely assess your bookkeeping needs. This assessment helps form a basic plan of what your bookkeeper must be proficient in. Bookkeepers provide a range of services as illustrated by Easy Books, and they must be vetted to fit your current as well as future needs.
Expertise Accelerated Offers Quality-Assured Outsourcing / Staff Augmentation Solutions for Your Bookkeeping Needs
Expertise Accelerated | General Accounting & Bookkeeping | Haroon Jafree
What is their scope of expertise and qualifications?
Qualifications and expertise are vital when choosing a bookkeeper. They must be registered and properly qualified for the job, as well as have relevant experience. Skipping this step is highly discouraged as the bookkeeper is privy to your financial information and is managing your financial records. Faulty bookkeeping due to lack of background checks can have negative implications for the business.
How are their communication and teamworking skills?
Figuring out channels of communication and your affinity with the bookkeeper is a fundamental requirement in the hiring process. If you find a candidate who checks all the boxes for skills and expertise yet has a non-cooperative attitude, it is best to walk away from them. Similarly, some bookkeepers may use channels like slack or direct messages that are incongruent to your practices. Find a bookkeeper who can fit well into your operations and communicate effectively and professionally.
How is your information secured?
Sharing sensitive information like financial records can be daunting and is one of the biggest concerns when handing bookkeeping over to an employee. Dark Reading reports that according to a survey by technology research firm Vanson Bourne, 52% of all cybersecurity breaches were due to employee failure to follow protocol and policy. Therefore, it is best to ask and scrutinize the methods with which your information is kept protected. Most bookkeepers use encryption programs to prevent external breaches while others may use a secure cloud server. Regardless of method, thoroughly scrutinizing these methods prior to the hiring is a good idea.
Should you hire an outsourced bookkeeping service?
Another important decision to consider is whether to hire an in-house bookkeeper or find an outsourcing firm. Simply put, outsourcing can prove a better option for many companies. Considering the above questions, an outsourcing firm can prove the better choice. You can expect a reliable outsourcing partner such as the Expertise Accelerated to offer highly qualified experts at just 40 percent of the US cost. Good outsourcing firms also ensure data protection and put in place controls to prevent and detect any fraud or errors.
Although important, bookkeeping is a mundane task in most organizations and the management may consider outsourcing or staff augmentation as a way to allowing the management to focus onto matters of core and strategic importance.
Expertise Accelerated as Your Bookkeeping Partner
Expertise Accelerated (EA) is a Connecticut-based outsourcing and staff augmentation specialist for accounting & finance services. EA is committed to delivering 60 percent quality-assured payroll savings to its US clients.
EA’s service methodology is quality-centric, and this reflects in its rigorous recruitment processes and the US CPA team training the offshore remote professionals for client-specific roles so they become a strategic fit for the client company.
Expertise Accelerated provides general accounting and bookkeeping services to help US SMEs achieve efficiency and value in their business operations.
A word about EA CEO Haroon Jafree (CPA)
Haroon is a turnaround expert with 20+ years of experience in the US CPG industry, half of which is at the C-suite level. He has a proven track record of delivering phenomenal payroll savings to notable US CPG brands. His areas of specialization include trade spend management, business process reengineering, and cost optimization, among others.
Conclusion
Conclusively, outsourcing the services of a bookkeeper is crucial especially with the increasing size of the business so that it can help keep record in a systematic manner with compliance to the set accounting standards. Bookkeepers are responsible for a number of important financial transactions such as recording transactions, maintaining ledgers and finalizing accounts, which serve as a core for company financials. But, it is worthwhile to concentrate on the quality of the bookkeeper as well as check out how they approach clients, their credentials, and how they protect your information.
Companies like Expertise Accelerated offer use of qualified specialists at considerably less expense than hiring internal ones, not to mention very strong measures concerning data protection. However, it is equally true that outsourcing enables management to avoid dealing with certain processes that could, in any case, be best handled by others while it continues to develop its business strategies and look for areas of growth, meanwhile, confident that the bookkeeping remains in professional hands.
No matter where you get your bookkeeper from, these factors will help you in hiring the right person for the job, taking efficiency and the capacity to ease your business into the right financial position you desire.
