In-house Bookkeeper or 3rd Party Bookkeeper

BOOKKEEPER RIDGELAND, MS

What’s Better for my Business?  Business owners often come to the incorrect conclusion that hiring a bookkeeper as an employee is the best use of their organization’s money.  In most cases bookkeeping is only a small part of an organization’s day to day administration; hiring an employee is not required. A business can hire a professional bookkeeper for a few hours a week or month to address the organization’s bookkeeping needs.

When deciding what is better for your business, ask yourself if consolidation of daily tasks is the answer. Do you want your in-house bookkeeper answering the phones, assisting clients, or doing HR all day ON TOP of the bookkeeping? Probably not! When it comes to the company books you will need a specialist who can sit and pay attention to detail. Bookkeeping is not a task that is done well while answering the phone.

First, a professional bookkeeper tends to be paid more than a receptionist or an administrative assistant. If the organization is paying a receptionist to do the bookkeeping then there is likely a question of competency. If the organization is paying a professional bookkeeper to do a receptionist’s work then the organization is paying too much.

Second, hiring a single individual to address the organization’s bookkeeping and administrative responsibilities increases the risk of fraud. Risk is much lower when the bookkeeping duties are segregated between a professional bookkeeper and another individual.

Things to consider:

• Service – An outsourced service is a vendor that can be replaced if you are not pleased with the quality or efficiency of the work. They want your business, so it is implied that there will be an expected level of customer service in order to keep the account.
• Quality – Bookkeeping services are like any other business. They compete and they need to stay ahead of their competition in order to win accounts. They do this by constantly setting themselves apart and creating innovative ways to provide you efficient and accurate service. The quality of work will be much better in the hands of a company that does that work all day every day.
• Reliability – A bookkeeping business does not go on vacation and will likely not leave you.That means that they will be there when you need something from them.       There is often turn over at small companies and if your bookkeeper leaves then this can put you in a bad position. Often times the knowledge of how to take care of the books walks out of the door with the employee.
• Consistency – If something happens to your in house bookkeeper, what is the protocol? One day, maybe two days is manageable. But what happens if it’s longer than that, or they just up and quit? Bookkeeping services have built in processes to handle this and it is off of your plate so that you will get the SAME level of service no matter who your representative is.
• Savings – Sure, using an outside service has a cost but often times a good accountant can save you money. Tax savings and reduced insurance costs are just a couple of ways that a good accountant can save you money. In some cases the savings are greater than the cost of the services.

What is best for your business? From the standpoint of dollars spent, risk to you and your business, and over-all quality of work done an outside service will make a lot of sense.

MARK A KNIGHT, CPA