Can you believe Thanksgiving has passed and the year is quickly coming to a close? I trust you had a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday with your family and friends. As we are ramping up on year-end tax planning and determining final year-end closing procedures for our clients, I thought it was a great time to discuss how Outsourced Accounting could be able to help your business moving forward into 2018.
As most business owners are aware, there are a variety of options out there to help with your books. So how do you go about choosing what is right for your business at its current operating stage? Let’s delve into these options and help you decide what might be best for you.
Option #1 – Bookkeepers
The main focus of a book-keeper is to enter of all the cash and credit card transactions of your company on an after-the-fact basis. Some book-keepers will assist you in ensuring all transactions are entered by reconciling your bank and credit card statements. In most cases, this is where the services will stop. Due to this, you will need to hire a tax accountant to do your tax compliance and planning services.
Option #2 – Accounting Firm
Accounting firms generally focus on compliance services. This means they provide tax compliance and assurance (audits, reviews, etc) services to their clients. Some of the firms may provide complimentary services, such as advisory services or monthly book-keeping to their clients when requested.
Option #3 – Outsourced Accounting Firms
Outsourced Accounting firms provide the most flexibility to assist with a business owner’s accounting needs. Outsourced Accounting firms are able to take over you firm’s entire accounting department from soup to nuts as a “one stop shop”. This ranges from book-keeping services (including QuickBooks and other software setup) to month-end financial statements to tax compliance and planning. The employees at an Outsourced Accounting firm can even supervise your internal staff, solve a variety of financial and accounting issues, and even assist with your business’s cash flow. Even if you don’t need all of the services, customizable packages can be created for your company.
In my opinion, any one of these three, or even a combination of the three can work for you business. Some start up companies may just want to use a bookkeeper in the early stages to keep costs down, while a third-year company may need more financial guidance and employ an Outsourced Accounting firm. A more mature company that is not in growth mode may find a traditional accounting firm as its best option. There is no “one size fits all” strategy with choosing the right firm as it all depends on how the business owner wants to move forward.
Should you have any questions about how to choose the right type of accounting solutions for your business’s needs please feel free to contact me directly!
