Outsourcing work to a contractor or business can feel nerve-wracking, but it’s a big occasion on the road to business growth. This is also a great time to explain your specific business and needs. You can also lay out your preferences for working together, including communication, availability, and invoicing. Hiring a small business bookkeeper involves a few steps to find someone you trust for the role. The most common mistakes are mixing personal and business finances, leaving taxes to the last minute, missing out on deductions, and not retaining records for long enough. Hand off your books to a Live bookkeeper and get back to what you do best.

Find experts who use reputable financial software

1. This is the “ecosystem” that I use to run my virtual bookkeeping service.
2. The Wave suite of apps manages tasks like invoicing, payroll, and accounting/bookkeeping for small business owners.
3. You might be down to a few top candidates by this step in the hiring process.
4. Whether it happens online or in person, meeting your final contenders gives you an opportunity to envision yourself working with each person.
5. Finding software that can help you collect client signatures will save you time by not seeing every customer in person and will streamline your workflow.

If you’re a freelancer, try applying your hourly rate to the time you spend on bookkeeping. Wave bookkeeping is a good choice if you already use apps from the Wave suite of tools. However, if you stick to a strict budget for your business, Wave may not be for you—it’s hard to predict how much it will cost per month unless you speak with one of their salespeople. Your bookkeeper has a portfolio of clients they’re working for, but they’re always available for questions or conversations about your finances. Their flexible schedule gives you the communication of a full-time bookkeeper but on a part-time budget.

Choose the right productivity tools

This is made possible through accounting software that allows you and your bookkeeper to share an account. In this arrangement, the accountant and business must utilize the same accounting software to ensure the proper transfer and communication of files. A QuickBooks Expert cannot begin cleaning up your past books until they receive the required supporting documentation, which your bookkeeper will request from you after your first meeting. Once your bookkeeper receives all the necessary documentation, they’ll typically complete your cleanup within 30 days.

Get help from QuickBooks experts today

While Equivity offers a fairly robust bookkeeping package, they don’t use their own software. If you sign up for Equivity, your virtual bookkeeper will use QuickBooks, or another off-the-shelf https://www.business-accounting.net/what-is-unearned-revenue/ accounting app, to manage your bookkeeping for you. You’ll need to learn how to use this software in order to help categorize transactions or enter transactions manually.

You can learn more about their building culture here when they talk about how essential intentionality is to their methods. Following GitLab’s positive case study and others can help give you some initial ideas on how to foster company culture and values even when not under the same roof. Courses to help you get more high-paying clients, so that your profits skyrocket AND you enjoy the people definition of abc analysis you serve. One of the easiest ways to reach your exact audience is through Facebook advertising. You can promote videos, images, or offers to people by age, interest, behavior, and location — needless to say, it’s the most targeted type of advertising. Send an email or text to any past employer or clients and ask them to leave a genuine review about your freelance bookkeeping work.

It also starts at $190 a month, which is less than nearly every other provider on our list. In-house teams use it to streamline their processes — data entry, bill payment, budget management, and more. Virtual bookkeepers use it to expand their offerings and provide even better service to their clients. Learn how you can use BILL’s accounts payable software to automate your processes. A virtual bookkeeper handles your bookkeeping remotely—they may not be in your town or even your time zone.

Virtual bookkeeping adds digital, cloud-based tools like BILL to the bookkeeping process, making it easy for a bookkeeper to keep financial records up to date day by day. A small business can likely do all its own bookkeeping using accounting software. Many of the operations are automated in the software, making it easy to get accurate debits and credits entered. For pricing, we considered whether a service offers a free trial or a free version of its software as well as the affordability of its lowest and highest price tiers. In the cleanup/setup phase, your bookkeeper helps you set up your chart of accounts, connects your banks, and teaches you the basics of QuickBooks. If you have information in QuickBooks already, your bookkeeper will help clean it up in the first month of service.

Your bookkeeper gets to know your business and provides ongoing bookkeeping services. As remote work becomes more and more prevalent, now is a great time to consider starting your own virtual bookkeeping company. The allure of flexible work schedules, heightened productivity, and reduced startup costs make this an opportune moment to venture into this thriving field. As you begin, make sure you outline clear business objectives and values to form a robust foundation for your venture.

In fact, you may find you rarely need to meet with your local bookkeeper in person. That’s because local and virtual bookkeepers are becoming more and more alike in both their services and how they offer them. https://www.quick-bookkeeping.net/ is especially helpful if your business mostly deals with digital transactions rather than cash.

Describing in detail who your perfect customer is will help you understand how you need to position yourself in terms of scale and services. Finally, establishing a strong network is crucial for obtaining potential clients and referrals. The more relationships you build, the wider your client base becomes.

Sunrise is a good bookkeeping services solution for sole proprietors and freelancers without employees, and it’s good for invoicing customers, income and expense tracking, and basic reporting capabilities. Virtual, outsourced, and online are often used interchangeably when referring to bookkeeping and accounting. However, a virtual bookkeeper or virtual accountant can sometimes refer to accountants or CPAs who work out of their homes and contract out their services individually. In contrast, outsourced bookkeeping and accounting nearly always refers to accountants with an accounting firm who handle your books from their own office.