As an entrepreneur and a business owner you have a multitude of tasks that need to get done every single day. It’s understandable that you would want to handle those tasks on your own and it can be difficult at first, financially, to pay someone to keep track of your books. Have you ever caught a simple mistake while balancing your checkbook or reconciling your bank account statements? I’m sure you have, haven’t we all? It is incredibly easy to make a simple error. “Is that a 3 or a 5? Is that decimal point in the right place? Did I carry the 1?” Now, imagine that simple error, which in your personal finances might be a matter of $50 or $100. Multiply it by the hundreds of transactions and the thousands of dollars coming in and out of your small business, and that simple mistake starts to look like a huge disaster that could take hours and hours to pinpoint and correct. You, as a business owner don’t have that kind of time to spend on this type of work. Your business and employees need you for other things.
1. Keep your focus on your business
As a business owner, especially a new business owner, you have a lot on your plate and you need to manage your time wisely to ensure that everything gets taken care of. You need to focus on core business needs such as marketing, advertising, and networking to grow your business or sell your product, you need strategies and funding. You need to manage your employees and potential and current consumers. Don’t spend extra time on something that someone else can handle for you, and probably more quickly and efficiently.
2. Stay away from areas that aren’t your expertise
If you started your own business, chances are that your area of expertise is in what your business does and not in bookkeeping or accounting. Not many business founders have background in finance or even a working knowledge of accounts payable, receivable, and especially taxes. And what you don’t know can hurt you and your business. Entrepreneurs who hire accounting help usually discover they weren't doing nearly as well on their own as they thought they were. It could be devastating to your business, and potentially yourself personally, if you don’t know what you’re doing.
3. Make sure everything is paid on time including taxes
When you fall behind on bookkeeping, your books stop reflecting the actual state of your finances. That makes it significantly more difficult to understand your current financial situation. You could easily overdraft accounts trying to pay bills or miss a bill or tax payment. Paying your quarterly estimated taxes shouldn’t be guesswork. You should know how much to budget for these payments, but this depends on you knowing your current books. Calculating it can be tough if your bookkeeping is out of date or you don’t have financial statements on hand. I’m sure that no one wants to get a call from the IRS that mentions words like “audit” or “jail time”. The last thing you want is to get audited or have the IRS after you just because you forgot those quarterly or annual tax filings. You don’t want your business impacted by late or forgotten payments, so put a bookkeeper in charge to give you the confidence that everything has been handled and paid on time.