Do I Need a Bookkeeper for My Small Business?

I know. Running your own business can eat up all of your time.

If you have a small business, you are probably doing everything from sales/marketing, customer service, and balancing the books.

At what point do you delegate some of those tasks?

For example, do you need a bookkeeper for your business?

Here are nine reasons for hiring a bookkeeper. At the end of this post, all nine reasons are summarized in one graphic.

1. How Much is Your Free Time Worth?

This is a worthwhile exercise for many tasks in your life.

Figure out what an hour of your time is worth. It could be as easy as taking your annual earnings divided by 2000 (40 hours x 50 weeks) or a subjective number like what is that hour worth to you? I’ve had weeks where I wouldn’t take $1000 to give up an hour with my daughters.

Now, if you have a choice of having someone mow your lawn, clean your house or doing it yourself, you can compare the cost of hiring someone to your hourly rate.

As a result, if an hour of your time is worth $300 per hour and you can hire a bookkeeper for a whole month for that same amount then why not turn it over to them?

2. Delegate When You Lack Knowledge

I once bought a drawing program and spent probably 40 hours learning how to use it for a graphic I needed. It looked horrible.

I contacted someone on Fiverr and received a beautiful graphic for a price cheaper than the software I bought, and that didn’t include all the other hours I spent using it or going online to look up how to use it.

Lesson learned: let someone else handle what you don’t (or want to) know.

3. Eliminate tasks you don’t enjoy

Hey, not everyone enjoys working with numbers like I do.

If you dread trying to balance your bank account balance to what the bank shows or trying to determine why the balance your top customer shows as outstanding against what they show, why not turn that pain over to someone who can do it for you?

4. Give Your Financials a Second Look

When it comes to financials, isn’t it nice to have someone else double-checking the accuracy so you don’t have to worry when you do your taxes, wonder if you have enough money to meet next week’s payroll or if you’re spending too much on office supplies?

What price would you put on that peace of mind? Compare that to the cost of hiring a bookkeeper.

5. Focus on Your Company Growth and Customers

Let me ask you a question.

If you had 20 hours to spend on your business, what do you think would bring you more to your bottom line over time?

Saving a few hundred dollars a month by doing your bookkeeping tasks yourself, or spending those 20 hours drumming up new business or talking with your current customers?

The latter right?

New business should by far bring in more money than the amount you’ll saving on bookkeeping.

6. Accurate Bill Payments

How do you make sure your bills are paid on time and not duplicated, or not paid too early? Who gets a 1099?

Many things can go wrong with your bill payments. You can forget to pay your vendors, pay them late, pay them too early or pay them too much or too little.

Any of these mistakes can jeopardize your credit, your vendor relationship, cut you off from future purchases or leave you without enough cash to manage the rest of your business.

A good bookkeeper can do all of this management for you.

7. Timely collections of the Money Owed By Your Customers

I remember having a paper route as a kid and dreading having to ring the doorbell to collect the customer’s payment.

Most people don’t like doing this. If you don’t like it, or if you don’t have time, let a bookkeeper do it for you so your business will have its cash in your bank and not in your customer’s bank.

8. Turn Over Payroll to an Expert

Payroll is one of those tasks you must delegate to someone who knows what they are doing.

Bookkeepers can either do the whole process for you or coordinate with a payroll service to have it done for the business.

There are too many rules, regulations, tax changes, and potential for errors to make this an area to skimp and save on.​

9. Scared of Doing Tax Returns?

Income tax filings are best left to a CPA, but bookkeepers can help by preparing supporting documentation needed by the CPA and by preparing and filing other tax returns like sales and use taxes.

These are returns that most states require to be filed monthly or quarterly and many bookkeepers can do them for you at a rate much lower than your CPA would charge.

SUMMARY – Do you need a bookkeeper?

From the time and money savings, to the focus on expertise and greater cash flow, a bookkeeper makes good sense for your business.

Would You Like to Work with Me?

For a limited time, I do have an opening for another client in my bookkeeping business. If you’re interested in talking to me so you can enjoy some or all of the benefits listed above, please click the link to my contact form

Contact Me!

List of reasons you need a bookkeeper