What Are Bookkeeping Services, Exactly?

Since you first became a business owner, how many times have you been told you need bookkeeping services? If you’re like most business owners, the answer is most likely, “A ton.” From the time you first opened your doors and collected your very first dollar, advisors, partners, and other well-meaning associates have undoubtedly weighed in and suggested a bookkeeping service to help keep your company’s books and finances on track.

If you have ignored that advice this far, it might be a good time to start doing your research before you dig the hole any deeper, because a bookkeeping service does more than just record payables and receivables, they guarantee the security, power and success of your business.

What A Bookkeeping Service Does

A bookkeeper service offers a three-step approach to developing and maintaining your company’s overall financial processes and management. The first step is to create the accounting software data file so that it’s tailored to the specific needs of you and your business. The Bookkeeper will ensure that you have access to the software and reports you need.

Next is the full-charge bookkeeper. We all know the basic duties of a bookkeeper: to track payables and receivables and keep all your business’s financial transactions documented. Sounds simple enough, but there’s a lot more to this job than meets the eye.

A full-charge bookkeeper can also manage payroll, handle deposits, create and maintain monthly financial reports, manage the ever-changing world of sales taxes as well as quarterly taxes and withholding. Bookkeepers also reconcile bank statements to internal accounts and even help out during an internal or IRS audit.

Whether you want to get a business loan, answer an auditor, or simply design next year’s budget and business plan, you need the assistance of a full-charge bookkeeper. They can help ensure that each of these tasks are completed correctly, in a timely manner, and that they are accurate enough to be truly useful.

Now that you will have begun to create a set of checks and balances within your business. Individual department spending will be recorded and analyzed by the bookkeeper, accounts receivables and payables reviewed and fulfilled by him or her, and the company’s spending is contrasted with its budget for review and analysis that can help identify inefficiencies and create more accurate future budgets.

And this is where we bring in the third step of the bookkeeping service, the controller. The controller increases the company’s overall financial accountability and checks and balances. A controller reviews the bookkeeper’s ledger for accuracy while also maintaining the integrity of the accounting data file in the future so that adjustments can’t be made without approval. Lastly, a controller issues monthly financial reports highlighting any critical issues that you need to understand and possibly address.

How A Bookkeeping Service Benefits Your Business

While every task the bookkeeping service completes is vital to the financial health of your business, it’s the underlying structure they apply that really makes a difference. Bookkeeping services implement—and maintain—a consistent financial process that strengthens the health of your company and helps to create and encourage uniformity in tracking, paying and reporting. The value of this is immeasurable as it insulates your business from many costly and dangerous risks.

Some benefits of the process comes into play when the full-charge bookkeeper coordinates with management of in order to approve purchases and gather expense reports. Not only does activity this require extreme organizational, management and math skills, but a bookkeeper must also have people skills in order to make this work.

The team also works to reduce your overall expenses. Not only do they ensure that books are maintained properly to avoid costly mistakes, fees, and penalties, but they can also help alert you to waste and mismanagement of supplies and inventory. All while saving you time since you will no longer need to try and perform these tasks yourself.

There’s no question that a bookkeeping service saves your business both time and money, but the processes and consistency introduced by one can increase the longevity and efficiency of your business, making you more profitable for decades to come.