Important Questions To Ask When Hiring a Bookkeeping Company or Professional

Is your business growing? Are you ready to reach to the next level? As a business grows, its accounting responsibilities become time consuming and complicated. So, it is in the best interest of a business to hire a professional Bookkeeping in Adelaide company. Ambitious businesses sometimes spend more time and efforts on accounting.

Instead they should focus on their long-term goals and core skills. Partnering with a specialized bookkeeping company can empower a business to hand over their routine workload while also getting strategic insight from a reliable partner.

If you are looking to hire a bookkeeper, you need to ask the right questions to ensure that they are right for your business. Don’t rush into the hiring process. Make sure to ask the most important questions so that you find the best fit.

How Can The Bookkeeping Company Help Your Business?

A bookkeeping company should be able to take your business to the next level. Rather than focusing your precious time on accounting and bookkeeping, hiring a bookkeeping company will let you concentrate on the core strategies and principles of the business, so that you focus on your business goals.

When you hire a bookkeeping service for your business, things will be more precise. But not every bookkeeper is equal and not everybody can satisfy your business needs. So, below are the main questions that can help you decide whether a specific business is perfect for your business or not:

 

What’s the scope of your bookkeeping service?

Although this is a straightforward question, there is a large variation between the bookkeeping services. Your needs may also differ based on your skills and the level of work that your accountant does. A few bookkeeping service act as a management accountant and can assist you to understand the figures as well as other skills of the bookkeeper.

Consider hiring the one who can do the following:

  • Entering supplier bill and paying the suppliers
  • Reconciling bank transactions
  • Raising sales invoice and also following up with the debtors
  • Filing/ Lodging sales tax, VAT, or GST
  • Checking the transactions coding to make sure that they are coded to the right account and with the right tax treatment
  • Prepare cash-flow prediction to assist plan cash outflows and inflows
  • Prepare a budget for monitoring performance
  • Help interpret the report and inform the stories behind the numbers
  • Prepare reports like Loss, Profit, and Balance Sheet

What is their expertise level?

You’ll want the bookkeeping company to accurately process your accounts and communicate with your business using a methods that take up minimum time. Although a good bookkeeping company can accurately process transaction, a great agency will be able to go back to review their work to recognize error and fix them. You can request them to talk with their previous clients or the accountants they have worked with earlier.

Based on your specific business style, another thing that you should consider is whether you want a detail-oriented bookkeeping company or one who is strategic. It won’t hurt to dig deep into their work experience and expertise to figure out their weaknesses and strengths.

What Tools Do You Utilize for Bookkeeping?

Figure out what bookkeeping tools and software does the bookkeeping services company uses. If you have a bookkeeping software already, look for a bookkeeper who could accommodate you.

Are they Registered And Qualified?

You’ll discover that a few bookkeepers have an accounting degree, diploma, or they may be CPAs or Chartered Accountants. You should ensure that the bookkeeper is registered within the state. The registration and qualification requirements for bookkeepers differ from one country to the other.

Ensure to ask the bookkeeper about their qualification and whether or not they are registered for filing or lodging sales tax. While hiring a bookkeeper, determine the particular requirements of your organization to make sure that the one you hire can deal with the workload. If your business has difficult or challenging aspects, you should look for a specialized bookkeeper.

Are They Familiar With Your Industry?

Ask the bookkeeping company about whether they have had worked for other clients from the same industry and request them to provide some sample of the common bookkeeping problems that they faced in your industry and how they resolved them. If the bookkeeping company is not familiar with your specific industry, they is a scope for learning curve during the time they familiarize themselves.

How Do They Communicate With Their Clients?

Relying a bookkeeper with something like accounting is a big leap of faith. Bookkeepers should be dedicated to maintaining honest and open communication channels. Ensure that your bookkeeping company is ready to communicate in the way you prefer. If you prefer phone communication, you can request bi-weekly checks through calls. And if you want the communication to be carried out through emails, make sure that the bookkeeper is tech-savvy.

What To Expect Around Response Time and Delivery Times?

A general complaint about bookkeeping companies is that they are slow to respond to emails and they don’t complete bookkeeping on time. So, you should ask about what can you expect every month or week from them. Also ask about what will be the expected time of response.

Wrap Up

The best bookkeeper or bookkeeping company is the one who has the technical knowledge and expertise required to successfully finish the job, one who is an expert in your specific industry or one who is willing and ready to learn. The bookkeeper should be highly passionate about whatever they do. This can reflect in their services. They should fit well in your company’s culture while they also align with your objectives and goals. So, you have all the important questions that you should ask a bookkeeper so that you get the best bookkeeping services in Adelaide.

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