When you first start your business and take it through its initial weeks and months of growth, you may be in the habit of keeping your organisation’s books yourself. However, as time goes on and your business grows, this task grows, too.
To help ensure your business’s continued expansion and success, it is a good idea to eventually start thinking about hiring a bookkeeper to organise and manage your organisation’s financial records.
But how do you know whether you really need a bookkeeper? If you’re not sure, you’ve come to the right place. As a company that can provide you with a bookkeeper in Ipswich or Surrey, we know all about how to tell when your business needs bookkeeping services.
Let’s take a look at the top four signs that it’s time for you to hire a bookkeeper, as well as why hiring a bookkeeper could be good for your business.
Time Management
One key indicator that you need to hire a bookkeeper would be if you have struggled with time management.
When you are running a business, your schedule can be extremely busy. Having to regularly set time aside to update your books means you’re losing time that could be spent doing other things. This can put you behind schedule, and once this happens, it can be difficult to catch up.
Losing time in this way can negatively impact on your business’s productivity, which – over time – can cause your profits and income to decline.
If you frequently find yourself struggling to update the books and complete the rest of your tasks, hiring a bookkeeper is definitely something that you should consider. This will take the pressure off you when it comes to keeping the business’s financial records organised and accurate, freeing you up to focus on areas of the business that need your attention.
With greater flexibility in your schedule, you will be able to spend longer on other tasks and give them all the focus that they require.
Books Out of Date
Keeping your books up to date is essential when it comes to looking after your business’s finances.
When you start to fall behind, the backlog can rapidly build up, and you will soon discover that it can be difficult to find the time to get things back on track. This can cause serious problems when the time comes to file your tax return, as your books will need to be fully updated in order to ensure your tax return is accurate.
Rushing to update your books and do your taxes could mean that you end up sending your tax return in late, which will result in a fine that increases the longer you take to send it in. Hiring a bookkeeper will help you to avoid getting into this situation, as they will keep your books up to date for you. This means that you will no longer be forced to find time in your own schedule to update the books, and you won’t have to worry when tax season comes around.
It isn’t just about taxes, either. Keeping your books up to date means that you can quickly check on your business’s finances and see how things are going. In other words, books that are regularly updated help you to stay organised.
Records Not Accurate
Inaccurate records can pose a serious problem for your business. If your books are inconsistent or incorrect, you won’t be able to accurately fill out a tax return.
Making mistakes in your tax return can result in you being issued with a fine, so it is important to make sure you have got it right before sending it in. Not only this, but inaccurate books are likely to give you an incorrect or misleading impression of your business’s financial state, which will probably impact on your future financial decisions.
There are many reasons why your records may be inaccurate. It could be that you’re pressed for time and trying to update the books as quickly as possible, leading to mistakes. Or it may be that you don’t have much experience with keeping books, creating a number of small inaccuracies that build up over time.
As your business grows, keeping the books accurate becomes more difficult, which is why it can be a very good idea to hire a bookkeeper before things get to this point. A professional bookkeeper will have the necessary experience and knowledge to help your business keep on top of its financial records.
Cashflow
Staying on top of cashflow is vital to your business’s financial security. You need to keep track of all of your income, as well as what you’re spending. This means keeping your books up to date – but this isn’t easy when you’re short on time.
Still, understanding your cashflow and knowing where the money is going and where it’s coming from gives you clarity regarding your business’s financial circumstances.
This is where a bookkeeper can be helpful, as they can keep track of cashflow on your behalf. As a consequence, you will be able to benefit from a clear picture of your organisation’s finances, without having to sacrifice time that you could be using to focus on other projects.
How Can a Bookkeeper Help?
Hiring a bookkeeper can be extremely beneficial for your business. The bookkeeper will be in charge of updating your company’s financial records and checking their accuracy, which means you can be confident that your business’s financial information is correct.
A bookkeeper can keep track of income and expenditure. This means you won’t have to worry about tracking your cashflow yourself, as your bookkeeper will have clear and up-to-date information on the business’s finances. This will be particularly useful when the time comes to file your tax return. It also means that you won’t have to take time out of your day to update the books.
The time-consuming task of bookkeeping can mean that other areas of your business don’t get the attention they need, which can inhibit the business’s growth and limit its success. With a bookkeeper taking care of the financial side of things, you can concentrate on the areas of the business that need your time and focus.
In short, hiring a bookkeeper helps to make you – and therefore your business – more productive, as it frees up time for you to complete important projects and give any issues the attention that they need in order to be resolved.
Are you on the lookout for a provider of bookkeeping services in Surrey and Ipswich that you can trust? If so, please don’t hesitate to reach out to the ST Accountancy team today.
