Cost Benefit Analysis-whether you Should Outsource your Bookkeeping to Professional Book Keeper

What is a role of a bookkeeper in your organisation :

BOOKKEEPERS keep complete, up-to-date, and accurate records of accounts and financial arrangements. Bookkeepers verify and enter information into journals and ledgers or into a computer. They periodically balance the books and compile reports and financial statements. Bookkeepers also receive, record, bank and pay out cash. They balance checkbooks with monthly bank statements. They may calculate employee wages from plant records or time cards and issue payroll checks. Some of the other work they may do includes posting accounts receivable and payable, prepare and make bank deposits, record payrolls, maintain inventory records, purchase supplies, prepare purchase orders and do expense reports. Bookkeepers may also make schedules, sort documents, and file bills. These type of jobs are found in every industry and may have various job titles, such as accounts payable clerk, accounts receivable clerk or assistant bookkeeper.

Cost of a Bookkeeper :

The pay for these jobs depends upon experience, clerical skills, the level of responsibility and the job location. Beginning salaries go from minimum wage to $ 15 per hour. Experienced Bookkeeper can make $ 20 an hour. After having worked for three years with the same firm, a Bookkeeper can earn at $ 25 per hour. A Bookkeepers usually work 40 hours a week; sometimes it may be necessary to work overtime. Some employers have fringe benefits such as paid vacations and sick leave, life and health insurance, and bonuses. Other benefits that the employer may include are participation in a credit union, or retirement and profit sharing plans.

Advantage of outsourcing Bookkeeping work to a professional bookkeeper :

There are several distinct advantages to outsourcing your bookkeeping functions. First and foremost is saving money. You get what you pay for and if you don't pay for quality than you won't have quality service. However, you can save money by outsourcing because you won't be paying for employer payroll tax expense, workman's compensation and general liability insurances, vacation time, sick time, health insurance and other benefits a good full time bookkeeper will expect from his/her employer. Just remember, however, that these costs will be built into the consultant's hourly rate and their fee will reflect these costs. Any bookkeeping consultant who has not taken these costs into consideration is not a bookkeeper you want - if they don't know enough to include these costs into their fees, then they don't know enough to be a help to your business. You should expect to pay at least three times what you would pay an experienced full charge bookkeeper.

And just how do you save money by paying three times the amount you would pay an employee? Well, let's see. There will be no recruiting, interviewing and training costs for start. And if you should find yourself unhappy with the services there will be no additional recruiting, interviewing and training to replace your bookkeeper. Also, you will not have to be concerned about law suits such as sexual harassment, unlawful firing, age discrimination, sexist, etc. Or an increase in your unemployment rates because you laid off an employee that you really wanted to fire but had no lawful cause to do so. So right away we have less time and money spent and potentially less hassle if things don't go well.

And of course you will not be paying workman's compensation and general liability insurance premiums. Also any worthy bookkeeper will expect at least two weeks vacation, coverage for sick time, health and dental insurance and even perhaps more benefits.

Most professional bookkeepers will have their own offices saving you space within your office. So you will not be buying that extra desk, calculator, computer and computer software. Your bookkeeper will be providing all of that as part of his/her fee. No software updates, computer maintenance, training costs, etc. Of course should you prefer to have your computerized bookkeeping records available to you at your office, a small investment in software installed on your computer makes this possible. Also no office supplies to be paid for. You will be amazed at just how much pens, pencils, and paper can be used by a bookkeeper. Your consultant bookkeeper will either ask you to drop off the work at their office, will pick it up at your office or some may even offer remote bookkeeping service. And by having your bookkeeping done off site, your bookkeeper will be able to work more efficiently and accurately because her/his office will most likely offer less distractions than your busy office. All of this is saving you money.

And the best reason for outsourcing is that you control the amount of money spent on bookkeeping. What I mean by this is that the person you hire to do your bookkeeping will be doing just that - not answering the phone, dealing with drop-bys, chatting to other employees, etc. Also you can start with just a few hours a month and add on when you need to and then adjust downward again should it be necessary. Can you imagine finding an employee to start with only four hours a month, then asking them to put in 20 hours a week for awhile and then back down to four hours a month again. I don't think you would keep them for very long, but a free lance bookkeeper is able to work around these variables and even more importantly expects to work with flexible schedules.

So have I convinced you yet? If so, then just remember "you will get what you pay for". Go for top quality because your financial records are the core of your business and without great bookkeeping you cannot expect to succeed no matter what type of business you have. After all don't you think you are worth it ?

About the Author:

Mr.Bhaskar Thakkar is a qualified Chartered Accountant and professional bookkeeper from India. He is a president of M/s. BT Associates, Chartered Accountants. The said firm provides Book keeping, Accounting, Auditing and Tax preparation services to various Chartered Accountants in UK, US and Canada. The firm is also specialized in preparation of VAT returns, Payroll Processing. Visit 1. btassociate.com,. A division of said firm provides various outsourcing solutions please visit 1. jobs2india.com., to get more details.

Bookkeeping Outsourcing has helped many businesses to boom

If your organization is smaller and you have less accounting task then you can hire accounts clerk to make your task done by them. You will have to hire trained and talented professionals for your accounts task and will have to set up a separate department. If you do not want to go through all these procedure then you can hire bookkeeping outsourcing services. Outsourcing has become a powerful management tool that makes any businesses efficiently working in any department and so bookkeeping outsourcing is one such. It is this strategy that has helped many businesses in making big revenue and has brought huge reputation. And as a result they are widely popular in the market.Bookeeping outsourcing needs careful handling of its data as they are precious documents of an organization. Any business has its ambition to earn large revenue and fame, and so proper maintenance of accounts will save a lot of your revenue and time.

There are many vendors in the market to undertake your bookkeeping tasks. Bookkeeping outsourcing has become key strategy of many businesses due to its wide success in the businesses. At any point of time, you may come across the need of accounting data and so it important to store data properly and safely. Bookkeeping outsourcing consists of data entry bookkeeping, single entry bookkeeping, commercial bookkeeping, one-write systems, memorial stone systems and various other to serve the business in the best way. Data entry bookkeeping task is meant to record all the data of the firm while double-entry bookkeeping is the most commonly used method of bookkeeping that is liable for writing up the daybooks for your company. This daybook comprises of entire records of purchase, sales, receipts and payments.

It’s the accountability of bookkeeping outsourcing system to enter the transaction records accurately in the supplier’s ledger, customer ledger, and daybook. The transaction in a single entry system is recorded once, either as income or an expense, as an asset or liability. These entries need to be recorded on a one page which is carpet restoration a revenue and expense journal. One-write system is a copyrighted system that is set up by using carbon-backed cheques and as the name suggests it works in the same manner. Whenever an individual or a bookkeeper writes anything on a cheque, the data is automatically transferred to a record system. You can trust on the vendor and can transfer your entire work to them to them. They take utmost care of your data by providing high security to them and does your work with complete professionalism.

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Five Guidelines In Selecting Your Outsourcing Bookkeeping Partner

Outsourcing refers to the practice of transferring day to day process of a business to some external service provider. It rose to prominence as a business strategy in the early 1980's when some European airline companies began transferring part of their back office function to New Delhi. The guiding force behind such a strategy then was to reduce labor costs. Outsourcing in today's context is however, necessitated not only by cost consideration but also other specific advantages like flexibility and scalability of operations etc. And as more and more companies join the fray, it is natural that there has been exceptional increase in the number of vendors undertaking such services.

It therefore becomes very important that outsource of critical functions like accounting be done with utmost care The most important point in this regard is identifying the right outsourcing partner. Policies and practices that the outsourcing partner follow, impact the companies business directly. Therefore extreme caution should be practiced by the companies while deciding on their outsourcing partners. Never should such a decision be taken in a rush.

The following pointers should be taken into consideration while selecting your partner:

1. Company's experience is direct pointer to its capabilities. Information relating to their total client base and kind of projects handled by them can give a clear idea of their real standing in the market. It is always prudent to check on the references provided by the company.
2. To have a clear idea of the people running the business it is always advisable to ask for a profile of its director, the key persons etc. Also their qualifications should be taken into consideration to judge the level of professionalism that can be expected.
3. The best way to judge the capability and genuineness of a company is by checking whether the company measure in expectations of its clients. It is thus the best way to gauge the company's credentials.
4. To get an idea of outsourcing partner's abilities in bookkeeping, it is always advisable to test him on files that have been already completed. This way their skills can be directly tested.
5. Once credibility about the competencies of the outsourcing partner has been established, assessment should be made about their capabilities, factors like proper infrastructure facility, number of staff etc that are directly involved with completion of the project should be checked. Here once again client reference plays an important role.
   

Once the credentials and capabilities of the vendor are established, it is necessary to establish that the outsourcing partner shares the same business objective as that of the company. This is important because communication becomes really easy once the objectives and strategies of the outsourcing company are shared by the outsourced vendor.

Bookkeeping is an important business function. Outsourcing such a key function is a decision that can have huge implications on the business. Both the outsourcing company and the vendor company will be venturing into a strategic relationship that affects both their businesses directly. But the element of risk lies more for the company that undertakes to outsource its books of accounts. It should therefore make the most informed decision to minimize the risk and benefit from it.

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