When should you get help with bookkeeping?

So you have started your business & are beginning to build up some orders, a client base & some pipeline of future deals. At what point should you consider getting some help with bookkeeping?

Some people just don’t like doing the paperwork, some don’t have the aptitude for it while for some it doesn’t make economic sense to do it in house. Unfortunately for the business owner though – it has to be done.  When I saw “unfortunately” I mean that sometimes a business owner will not immediately see the benefits of keeping timely up to date records & it can often take a certain event to happen for the owner to realize its importance.

Ideally from the day you create a company or register as sole trader / partnership you should seek some form of bookkeeping or accounting advice. You are putting your money & your name into something & you want to be happy that your investment of both is protected.  In our experience most entrepreneurs are self driven “Do It Yourself” kind of people & are willing to take on so much that they can eventually become overrun with tasks. They can so caught up in all the complications that running your own business can bring that they don’t take a step back to look at the figures & say “how am I actually doing?” Some will look at the bank balance (which isn’t a bad thing either) & say if it is going up then I must be making money, however that is a very simplistic view & may not show a true picture at all.

I mentioned above that it can take a certain type of event to happen for a business owner to realize the importance of bookkeeping. Perhaps you have had issues getting paid by customer or found an employee who has been stealing from your business, or you have gone through a revenue audit which showed potential exposures to fraud. Why wait for one of these things to happen? Hiring a bookkeeper can help you to be proactive in trying to avoid these occurrences as well as keeping you in line with all company law filing requirements. Far too often we find companies where “the horse has bolted” & they have reached the end of the year & not done as well as they had hoped. Had they gotten the information earlier they could have made changes that would have improved their situation & not allowed them fall into the hole they currently find themselves in. This is the key point. You don’t want to wait till 6 months after the end of the year to find what your profit (or loss) was.