I am often asked should I ‘do’ my own accounts or should I outsource them?
Well, the answer is – it depends!
Do you have the time, skill and inclination to do your own accounts?
Can you afford to outsource it?
Can you afford not to?
What is the best use of YOUR valuable time?
If you can earn £100 per hour with your time delivering your product or service – it will almost certainly be a waste of your time to spend that time doing your own bookkeeping instead of engaging a bookkeeper at £25 per hour to do it for you.
You should be asking yourself the same question as you would ask one of your customers when you sell your own services. Should they engage you to do your job, or should they try and do your job themselves?
It also depends on what you want.
5 compelling reasons to do your own accounts
- You want to learn more about your own business, and you want to learn how to control it – financially speaking. Keeping good records requires you to be diligent, efficient, methodical and accurate. You’ll need to set up regular routines, habits, processes and internal systems to keep on top of your accounts – these are skills that can be applied to many other parts of your business.
- You want to keep a tight control on your ‘spends’ and see every penny going in and out of your bank account. You will quickly spot anomalies and errors, and those annoying subscriptions that you no longer use and have forgotten to cancel.
- You want to keep a tight control of your income, reconcile debtors daily and keep on top of your aged debtors. You’ll know exactly how much you are owed by your customers and can chase regularly.
- You may have an accountant who does compliance accounting for you – they take care of your end of year accounts and tax return – but they do not provide you with monthly management accounts to help you measure and manage the performance of your business.
- You can’t afford to outsource it just yet. But you will, as soon as your business is big enough.
5 compelling reasons to outsource your accounts
- You are busy and you have more important things to do than your accounts – such as grow your business and take care of your customers!
- Qualified, skilled bookkeepers and accountants can do your books better, faster and more efficiently than you can. The same way you can do your job, faster and more efficiently than your clients could do it- that’s why they hire you!
- You are too close to your clients and probably too nice. Aged receivables are usually collected faster and more effectively when chased by a third party who is not afraid to have that difficult conversation with your lovely client.
- A good bookkeeper is worth their weight in gold and can often help to reduce accountants fees – they’ll provide a much higher standard of records than you might be able to which might make the due diligence (record checking) aspect of your accountant’s job easier at year end.
- You can afford to.
…..so what is RIGHT for you?
