Every small business is unique, just like the people who own them. If you run a small business, you know they also have unique problems. Symptoms of growth and increased complexity, however, are pretty easy to spot, even between grossly different industries. If your small business shows any of these symptoms, then it might just be time to hire a professional bookkeeping services firm. Although it’s easy to dismiss bookkeeping services as unnecessary expenses, they are in fact vital to small businesses. They can ease strain and increase growth. They can even benefit your health. So, what exactly are the symptoms of a small business in need of bookkeeping services?
Expanding Roles
An expanding company generates more work. Whether you are diversifying, opening a new branch, or simply taking on new kinds of work, your business will face additional pressure. To ensure your infrastructure can handle the altered load, you need to make sure the work is evenly distributed. You must also make sure that you don’t overwhelm key parts of your business. If you handle tasks like bookkeeping along with the additional functions of your new business, you increase the risk of error in all tasks. The same is true of an employee given too many roles to handle.
Increasing Revenue
The more money you make, the more information you need to record. You may also need to prepare invoices, and you certainly have to worry about balancing your ledger. It’s more important to use new revenue to improve your business than it is to handle the minutiae of bookkeeping. It’s almost impossible to handle both efficiently with a small staff. If you are self-employed, the burden increases exponentially. It’s worth the cost to invest in bookkeeping services with some of that new revenue. This leaves you free to capitalize on your new endeavors.
Hiring Additional Hands
New workers bring fresh insights and extra muscle to any business. Unfortunately, they also bring extra paperwork. Training new employees also takes time, which you may or may not have. Hiring a bookkeeping service allows you to take the time you need to educate and prepare your new hires so they’re ready to make your business shine. By handing off your bookkeeping responsibilities, you also make more time to handle the legal and personal paperwork required for every employee. The money your new employees bring in should more than compensate for bookkeeping fees.
Existing Problems
If you already know your books have errors, then it’s definitely time to hire professional bookkeeping services. Errors cost. The most obvious concern is, of course, reporting your income when tax season arrives, but errors also create more immediate problems. Without an accurate accounting of your business dealings, you have no way to diagnose its performance. You may also suffer from third party accounting errors that you cannot catch without thorough bookkeeping records of your own. Even those who enjoy bookkeeping can make errors, especially if they balance their books at the end of a long, tiring business day. A bookkeeping service fights errors with professionally trained staff. They also use multiple sets of eyes to ensure your numbers are accurate.
Personal Health
If you own or run a small business, you probably already know your health is at risk. Stress kills, but there are plenty of ways to lower your risk factors. Personal stress can also kill your business. If you dedicate too much time and energy in busywork behind the scenes, then you pay for those lost hours in lost profit. It’s also easy to drain yourself with paperwork when you’re really needed at the front. You can’t be your best and brightest when you’re trying to run every aspect of your business in person. Allowing a bookkeeping service to handle your books, especially during peak seasons, saves not only time and money, but also your health.
It’s no coincidence that rapid growth is included in nearly all the symptoms of a small business in need of bookkeeping services. As your business expands, so do the number of roles you and your employees must fill, and hiring additional employees still results in more work. The more revenue you bring in, the more work you generate; everything leads to more work. Fortunately, all of these scenarios are positive. In order to continue your pattern of growth, you must relegate more tasks to employees or outside vendors. Hiring professional bookkeeping services early on in the development of your business, allows you to grow alongside reliable bookkeepers. As you need more bookkeeping work completed, you can simply move to larger service options from your provider.
While every business is unique, there are various reasons for hiring a bookkeeping service. If bookkeeping has been giving you trouble, then hiring bookkeeping services may be just the thing your business needs to get back on track. Whether you’re struggling or growing, you should check your small business for the symptoms. It’s probably time to hire bookkeeping services.
