Many small businesses consider how best to get the accounting done. It’s not feasible to hire higher-priced and more experienced talent, although sometimes this is needed.  On the other hand, a bookkeeper or another employee who is recruited and told to “just figure out the accounting until we hire someone” is a problem waiting to happen.  CPA’s of course can do it all, but at hundreds of dollars per hour (and sometimes not the fastest service) this is not the best solution either.  So what to do?

And accounting is important – management needs reliable reports to make good decisions. Banks and investors frequently request financial statements and accuracy is critical.  Vendors and clients often request special information (“can you send me a statement of what we’ve been billed and paid so far this year”).  And oh yes, a panoply of government agencies require an accurate picture of what is going on so that they can tax you enough.

Problems with In-House Accounting

For most small businesses, doing the accounting in-house is a time-consuming chore and often requires management attention. And sometimes management wants to be doing other things.  Home-brewed accounting methods are only encouraging a catastrophe.

Payroll, payroll taxes, withholdings and some HR areas are other related areas that are definitely not for amateurs.

Outsourced Accounting

One good solution to effectively deal with all of this is to outsource accounting to a small business accounting firm who can do it all (like us!). Most of the time committed to your system is usually charged by at bookkeeper rates to keep expenses low and to get it done fast.  But when special issues arise, more experienced accountants can step in and get it done with minimal disruption of your management.

Most full charge bookkeepers are experienced in many areas and industries and can handle about 70% to 80% of the billable time and accounting entries, and are happy to speak with you to explain things. Sometimes accounting clients prefer to do some of the work in-house, and then hand-off the rest to their accounting firm.  That’s ok too.

Remote and Online Accounting

Besides this, a popular arrangement these days is remote data-entry. This means that we don’t come into your office very often, but work from our location where everything is set up for just one purpose – accounting.  We have good systems and good management ready to step in keep things moving.  Remote accounting is another way to keep costs low.  And note that when we work remotely clients need not supply a desk, a computer loaded with software, parking spaces, keys, etc.  But we all get 7×24 access for everything from bookkeeping to running GAAP compliant financial statements.  (“We,” herein, is a proficient outside accounting firm, most likely us).

Methods to Setup Remote Accounting

There are a few ways to set up remote accounting: The most common are:

  • Set up a connection to login to your existing system (take about 30 minutes).
  • Use QuickBooks Online – This is a special version of QuickBooks, hosted at Intuit. Related advantages are that backups are performed daily; there is great security, and no worries about QB updates and bug fixes.
  • Run your QuickBooks data-file from our systems, and we send reports as needed.  The main advantage once again is offloading the responsibility.

Accounting Input

In all cases we’ve still got to get the entry data. To name a few, this might include bank account and credit card statements, hours for payroll runs, vendor bills, and invoicing data.  Usually we can access this directly by logging into your various accounts with limited rights – we need the right to download data but not to move funds or make payments.  This is easy to set up and most major players such as banks, cred card vendors, Intuit Payroll and ADP have great controls such that different logins have specified rights.

Other Areas Where Outside Accounting Can Help

Once things get going, your outside accounting firm is in a position to help in a lot of related areas. We’ll talk more about these later but they include (in no particular order):

  • QuickBooks Setup, from the chart-of-accounts to payroll to inventory.
  • Advising on accounting (and some operations) workflow.
  • Training.
  • High volume operations data entry.
  • Accounts receivable – report on what is outstanding and HELP COLLECT!
  • Technical issues such as improving systems response speed and purging QuickBooks of corrupt entries.
  • Advise on payables, especially when cash is tight; periodic cash-forecasting reports.
  • Sales taxes in differing localities and jurisdictions.
  • Dealing with contractors (“1099’s”) to assure compliance with vendor agreements and avoid classification as employees.
  • Standard monthly reports such as the P&L, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow.
  • Special reports as designed by management.
  • Budgets for departments and for the company as a whole.
  • Operating plans.
  • Business plans and presentations to help raise new equity or for bank loans.
  • Reconciliation of bank and credit card statements.
  • Fix legacy accounting problems.
  • HR and Payroll special issues.

Give us a call to learn more.