What are the benefits of outsourcing your company’s bookkeeping?
Simply put, bookkeeping is the backbone of your company’s financial team, whether you’re the owner of a startup or a big business.
However, many business owners are reluctant to hire outside help due to myths surrounding outsourced bookkeeping companies.
To help you make the best choice for your business, we debunk some of those myths.
Take a look at some of the most persistent myths about outsourced online bookkeeping to understand whether it’s the right option for your company.
If you’re looking to cut your startup costs, you may feel as though managing your own books is a canny move. However, doing so may actually cost you opportunities you would have otherwise taken up if you’d had more time.
As a business owner, you know accounting isn’t the only function you need to oversee. You need to regularly conduct time-value analyses of your business (and yourself) to successfully measure how much time you spend on each task. The results may come as a surprise.
For instance, you might see that by outsourcing your business’s bookkeeping you save time, allowing you to more effectively focus on other tasks. By not capitalizing on these opportunities, you potentially lose out on revenue.
Bookkeeping requires a considerable amount of straight data entry. But a professional bookkeeper can do much more than that. Depending on the job, each individual’s duties may vary.
Bookkeepers can produce financial reports and reconcile any discrepancies arise. They can also check the accuracy of entries, communicate issues with the financials, and contact customers/suppliers to pursue payments. A bookkeeping service company can also inform management of potential future financial problems, especially when using cash-basis accounting.
So, although data entry is a considerable part of bookkeeping, a professional bookkeeper can perform a lot of other valuable work. In fact, in many organizations, bookkeepers have the broad authority to deal with suppliers, reconciliation, and customers.
Outsourcing tasks to a bookkeeping company actually allows you to take better control of your business. Since you don’t have to worry about maintaining your own books, you have time to concentrate on other tasks that help your business’s growth.
Outsourcing also puts you in a better position to make informed decisions. Many business owners think this will make them lose control of their financials. But when your books are in order, your control is better because you more thoroughly understand your company’s financial position.
For some reason, many business owners automatically think that if they outsource to a bookkeeping service provider, their company’s bookkeeping will be done overseas. While this might be a common practice for technology companies and manufacturers, this isn’t always the case with bookkeeping companies.
Outsourcing means you are simply contracting the work or obtaining services from a third party. It in no way implies that the job will be outsourced overseas. While some bookkeeping firms may employ overseas bookkeepers, many others don’t. The bookkeeping service may even have a local office. So, there’s no need to worry about your financial records being sent to a different country.
Since bookkeeping deals mainly with sensitive financial information, many business owners worry about how safe it is to outsource this work. While mostly a myth, financial documents are always at risk of some kind of data breach. This can also happen when your bookkeeping is done in-house.
This is precisely why most bookkeeping service companies take extra precautions to ensure the security and safety of your financial data. For instance, they may use file-sharing programs that let you share files using cipher encryption. Additionally, they conduct regular audits of all files in their possession to ensure there have been no breaches.
Outsourced bookkeeping service providers know the sensitive nature of their work so put in place many security measures. They go beyond to follow security protocols and ensure high standards while maintaining strict industry codes.
Your time is best served to focus on the core aspects of your business. The myths we have looked at have generally been created due to the experiences of a few. If you want to enjoy the benefits of outsourced bookkeeping services, they will help you handle high-volume transactions, no matter how complex.
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