FAQ's
What factors affect my bookkeeping fee?
It really depends on the level of complexity that’s common to your industry or to your specific business.
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Keep Up: The more transactions and accounts you have, having us run payroll, if you need accounts receivable or account payable support, or if you have inventory or sales tax needs, and to what degree you need these services, will all affect your monthly fee. This will also be true for Catch Up work (minus the payroll aspect).
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Clean Up: What is the condition of your books and do they need a minor or deep clean? The more inaccurate they are will require more time and effort it will take to get them in the state they need to be in.
Will you be doing my taxes?
No thank you! Tax preparation is a specialized skill set and our team is focused on being your bookkeeping expert. However, at the end of the year we will provide your tax preparer all the financial statements and reports they need to do their job well. In fact, if you're comfortable, we prefer to coordinate with your tax preparer to make things easier on you and to help make sure you are on track to meet your annual tax goals.
How will you log into my QuickBooks? Is that secure and safe?
QuickBooks Online (QBO) is a web-based software that uses bank level security. You will grant us access through the "My accountant " section in your QBO account. When you do this, we do not need to know your personal login information for your business' QBO account: your books are your books! Internally, we login to our accountant accounts using very long complex passwords and store them in a password manager. We take this approach for all the software and accounts we use and never share passwords outside specific personnel inside our organization.
Can't we just do the bookkeeping ourselves?
You could absolutely do it yourselves. Many small businesses are tight with their resources, both time and money, when they first get started, and we definitely recommend having your expenses in line before deciding to use an outside service. Yet, there are a number of other questions to consider outside of just the financials.
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Do you know what you're doing? If you’ve never studied accounting principles, using an accounting program isn't as easy as learning other types of software. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes related to those accounting principles, so if not set up correctly, things can get messy very quickly. Roughly 50% of new clients require a clean up of their books before getting started on your typical keep up, monthly service.
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Is it worth your time? Your time is valuable. If you'd end up spending an entire weekend, or longer, grinding through your numbers every couple months when you could be spending time with your loved ones or working on growing your business, the small fee for hiring outside help is often worth it.
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Will you keep up with it? Most business owners start out with good intentions but, as with most tasks we dread, it gets quickly pushed to the bottom of our to-do list. Once we get behind, getting caught up becomes an overwhelming task that is either rushed through and is more prone to errors or continues to not get done which continues to compound the situation.
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When it comes down to it, this is your business and you need to be happy with the decisions you make for it. Use this as food for thought when trying to determine the best approach for your business.
What should I expect during the bookkeeping process and how much will I need to be involved?
Once your account is set up properly, our goal is to have you as hands off as possible. If you are using a document management system for sending in receipts then you’ll have that role. Outside of that, we will send out a checklist of transactions we need clarity on periodically throughout and at the end of the month (e.g. Amazon, Walmart, unusual merchant names). Once we have all the relevant information to close your books, we will review them and get your monthly reports out to you shortly after. So, while we try to make it as simple as we can, you won’t be completely hands off – we aren’t mind readers, after all!