Better bookkeeping? Book a chat with your accountant.

Thinking about hiring a bookkeeper for your business? Have you thought about outsourcing the work to your accountants instead? JESSICA MADDAMS of Nottingham-based accountancy firm Page Kirk look at the pros and cons.

If you run a small business, it is tempting to think you can do the bookkeeping yourself. As you expand, you may consider employing someone in-house to manage the bookkeeping on your behalf. Both solutions can potentially work but are not always the perfect answer, in terms of cost nor expertise.

The more you scale up, the more the bookkeeping requirements start to intensify. It is also the case that more expertise is often required. As a business owner, it is critical that your time and attention is not drawn away from the core aspects of the business – those areas that really need YOUR attention, those which simply cannot be outsourced at any cost.

So, what about the cost? There is no doubt that keeping an eye on the bookkeeping yourself is likely to be more cost-effective in the very early stages of a business. But as you expand into new markets, develop a wider range of clients/customers and start employing more people, the books are no longer a task that can be completed in a few hours during the evening. They become a different beast - something that can often occupy someone for multiple days per week.

At this point you might want to think about outsourcing the work.

Asking your accountancy firm to take the job on would bring the following benefits:

Access to Financial Expertise

Not everybody is wired to work with numbers and financial data. Fortunately, accountants are able to provide a high standard of financial advice because of their education, experience and accreditations, and they will also deliver more accurate reporting with a smaller margin of error. After all, this is what they do day in, day out. Any small or medium sized business owner would be better off spending their time on what they're good at, and leaving the financial reporting to an accountant.

Cost and Time Savings

As businesses expand, owners will almost always find themselves focusing more and more on financials than the actual core functions of the business. If you currently look after the bookkeeping yourself, you're soon going to need help. In most cases, outsourcing bookkeeping to a firm of accountants is cheaper than recruiting, training, and paying an in-house bookkeeper.

No costly and time-consuming hiring

One benefit of outsourcing your bookkeeping which is often overlooked is the instant availability of resources if your business scales up quickly. Recruitment of new members of staff is time-consuming, costly, and unfortunately does not always result in a good hire. With outsourced bookkeeping, your accountancy firm will easily be able to allocate more resources to your business in an instant and scale their service alongside your business.

Super-efficient software

Accountants can now provide their clients with low-cost, time-saving apps and tools such as QuickBooks and Receipt Bank, which cut down on the endless amounts of paperwork and filing you will need to do in house. A good team of accountants will also ensure that all the relevant information is reported to HMRC on time and correctly and ensure that data is kept securely and confidentially. Using an accountant who can advise on and implement the latest apps and software also means that you are able to see the live data and your business' performance in real-time.

So, the outsourcing option now looks attractive. But there are a couple of points which you will want to discuss clearly and establish before engaging your accountant for this type of work.

Historically, an in-house finance team has only been a viable option for a larger business. The benefit of this is that you can walk down the corridor to check-up on your business finances and have discussions with your team in the same room, any time of day. With outsourced services, you will need to ensure that one of your accountant's priorities is communication and availability. You want to make sure that you are always able to keep your finger on the pulse where accessibility to financial information is concerned. With modern accounting apps and software, this is the sort of service that a good accountant can offer you nowadays.

You also need to set out clearly the fees which your accountant will charge for a full bookkeeping and advisory service, as some firms may surprise you with hidden charges. Like most other services nowadays, you want to agree to a monthly fee and have it made clear exactly what that fee does and does not cover. If you are dealing with an established firm, such as Page Kirk, you will find that everything is made absolutely clear up front.

Page Kirk has an extensive history in providing accurate, timely and trustworthy bookkeeping and financial reporting services to a range of clients. Before agreeing any services we believe in being open and honest about fees. We are also a QuickBooks platinum partner and a Xero partner and we have a dedicated team of cloud accounting bookkeepers, who can help you and your business.

If you would like to know more, please do not hesitate to contact a member of the team by calling on 0115 955 5500 or email at enquiries@pagekirk.co.uk.