Hm, Should I Be Hiring a Bookkeeper?
Let me start by saying this question comes my way A LOT, and the only blanket answer I can give is: “well, it depends.” But to be more specific, and at the risk of sounding salesy, the truth is your business probably needs a bookkeeper sooner than you think.
Here’s why:
When you start out, you’re usually trying to keep costs low. The bookkeeping is probably something you can manage yourself as you navigate the landscape of having a new business, figure out your base pricing structure and test how much you actually need to live off. But if you’re going to have big ingoings and outgoings right off the bat (say, you’ve got big capital or some kind of funding), or you’re at the stage where reasonable money is starting to come in (say, around 70K/year), the worst thing you can do is get off on the wrong foot.
Bookkeeping is something that needs to be taken seriously. (It is your livelihood, after all.) What I see all too often are businesses that scale too quickly and give their operators too much to manage at once. Guess which department is the first to forfeit attention. The books! If you want your business to keep growing steadily and successfully then this is the place all of your answers lie. The more organised you keep it, the easier the answers are to find.
The beauty of today, and all the access we have to technology, means it’s extremely easy to engage someone to manage your numbers from anywhere in the world. No sitting in cold, musty rooms with old men who speak jargon. No waiting in queues with notebooks full of questions, and shoeboxes full of receipts. It’s already super easy to make your life even easier.
So, the next question is, WHEN? You’ll know you are ready to outsource if you’re dealing with any of the following scenarios.
1. You spend three plus hours trying to reconcile your accounts each week (FYI it will probably take a professional bookkeeper less than thirty minutes - think about how much better off you’d be spending your time on billable hours)
2. You loathe anything to do with numbers and looking at your accounts. You actively avoid doing it, until the day before your tax is due and then you spend 24 hours in turmoil trying to get everything organised. As a result, because you hate it, you don’t take proper care and get everything wrong.
3. You’re losing money. You don’t know where it’s being haemorrhaged from because it looks like you’re selling services and products, but for some reason no profit is being achieved and you’re falling behind on bills.
4. You want to scale up. Quickly, but healthily. You have BIG goals and are keen to do some accurate forecasting for your next quarter or year.
Part of a bookkeeper’s job is also to make sure you are above board and up to date with the ATO. These can vary from industry to industry so, if you want to start making any noise then you best be making sure you’re following the rules. I know, I get it, rules aren’t fun but they are there for a reason. Trust me when I say “Oh, sorry, I didn’t know I had to pay GST” won’t get you out of having to cough up the money you owe the government and then some for forgetting. Now THAT is haemorrhaging money!
Knowledge is power, and understanding your numbers is essential for any business. A bookkeeper can work with you on a weekly, monthly, or even just a quarterly basis. Don’t wait until the last minute. And if you’re really not sure, let’s jump on a 15-minute discovery call – free of charge – and have a look at how a bookkeeper could best serve you and your business. CLICK HERE.
Oh, and it’s tax deductible too! *wink!*
