How Does Outsourced Bookkeeping Work?
Small companies have little money. Business owners frequently find that they just do not have the time to worry about peripheral yet crucial business functions when they are deeply involved in the day-to-day operations of the company. One such task is bookkeeping. When you have a business, you should be concentrating on expanding and growing it rather than worrying about accounting software or having to record every transaction. Let a bookkeeper that is contracted out to handle that for you.
How does it work?
Onboarding
There is a crucial onboarding phase that occurs prior to any work being done. Establishing mutual expectations among all stakeholders is a crucial phase in this procedure. A small thing like communicating too much or too little can make or mar a relationship.
The following tasks are performed during the onboarding phase:
- The team must fully comprehend the current financial procedures and documentation used by the company before they can begin. This is done to make sure that all previous records adhere to reporting requirements and make the switch from internal to external bookkeeping as seamless as possible.
- Creating customisation process maps: They employ process maps for specifying what will occur throughout the month so that month end reports are delivered on time. They alter these maps in accordance with the services to be rendered and the business requirements of the client.
- Request access to your records and accounting software: After a comprehensive analysis of the existing procedures and the creation of a new process map, the outsourced bookkeeper will proceed to the next phase of the onboarding process, which involves giving them access to financial data. They’ll require access to your present accounting program.
- Request access to your banking institutions and ÇRA accounts: Your bookkeeper can assist you with sales-tax filings if they have access to the CRA. Like with accounting software and apps, the majority of banks let you grant access to a third party that is only read-only, so your bookkeeper can view your account transactions without having access to your money.
- Transition to cloud based accounting software: To facilitate their work, teams of outsourced bookkeeping services will typically convert the account books into digital format. Your bookkeeper may advise you in digitizing and setting up integrations with accounting tools and to share receipts and invoices with your outsourced team, for any processes that are not online, such as paper invoices, expense tracking, receipts, etc.
- Train your team on new processes and new tools: The last stage is to train every team member dealing with the new procedures and any newly implemented tools after all the onboarding preparation work is finished.
- Going live
They can go live once the onboarding process is finished and begin relieving you of the majority of the work. It’s crucial to remember that you can’t be totally hands-off when you hire someone else to handle your books. They still require your help in order to succeed. By simply cutting down on the time you spend by depending on bookkeeping outsourcing, you can reallocate that time to other projects and still receive reliable, accurate financial data.