What Are Bookkeeping Services?
If you are like most people, you are probably wondering about how bookkeeping services are different from accounting services. And you might also be wondering what bookkeepers do exactly and how much it would cost to hire one.
Well, we are here to tell you that the sum of what makes bookkeeping services different from accounting can be summed up in these words: Day-to-day versus big picture. While bookkeeping handles the day-to-day transactions, accounting takes a look at the big picture.
Bookkeepers use a day-to-day ledger software like Quickbooks to keep tracks of sales, receipts, purchases, and payments. Data is then gathered from the information that is entered. Once this is done, the accountant takes a look at the data and interprets it into information that the decision makers of a company can appreciate. For example, using the bookkeeping data generated in the last three months, an accountant can interpret if the company is profitable or barely above water.
But of course, interpreting data is not the only thing that an accountant does. However, for the purposes of this article - since we are talking about bookkeeping services - let us stop at data interpretation.
Do you need to hire a bookkeeping service? Well, that really depends on whether or not you are large enough that you can't do the work yourself. If you feel that you need to outsource the work, be prepared. Simple bookkeeping services are going to cost you $500 per month while complex transactions that require complex bookkeeping skill cost $2,500. If you think it is expensive, not really. Remember that your business is totally dependent on your cash flow. You will want to have the information as accurate as possible.
Thankfully for you, there are many outsource accounting companies out there that provide bookkeeping services. You only need to do a quick search on Google to get their names and contact numbers.
When it comes to the actual hiring, you have two choices here. You can choose the services that are based in your area. Or you can outsource the work to an accounting company that is located offshore or in another country.
Who you choose to hire largely depends on whether you trust in outsourcing the work to overseas companies. Let's face it, outsourcing of the country is cheaper since the work will be done by bookkeepers accepting lower salaries, like those based in India and the Philippines.
Anyway, if you feel that you cannot afford to hire outside help, you can do the bookkeeping yourself. The work is actually not difficult as there are software programs that are intuitive and make it easy for you to enter information under the right column.
The software we recommend you use is Quickbooks. We recommend it because it has an app that allows you to do work even when you are on the go. You can use the free trial to see how it works or you could get started right away for $15 per month for the basic program.