Bookkeeping is one of the vital processes of accounting in a business. Apart from the legal facet of preparing a business for tax filing, bookkeeping helps a business budget accurately and maintains an organized record of financial transactions. You may have hired someone in-house or found someone who provides remote bookkeeping services.
For small businesses, bookkeeping is crucial when it comes to making decisions about scaling your business. You will need to constantly remind your investors that you are on the right track. You will need to do some bookkeeping to report your financial performance to them.
Benefits of Outsourcing Your Bookkeeping Needs to Remote Bookkeeping Services
If you are a small business owner, you may be playing several roles like a salesperson, marketing specialist, and maybe even an accountant. When all these responsibilities lie on your shoulders, chances are, some errors will creep in while you log your financial records, not to mention the last-minute confusion when the debits and credits don’t tally.
That’s when you start looking for someone to take care of your bookkeeping needs. You will be left with enough and more time to concentrate on growing your business rather than spend hours learning and practicing the nitty-gritty of accounting.
For small businesses, hiring someone in-house invites a lot of extra expenses. It only makes more sense to outsource your bookkeeping, especially during this pandemic. Even before COVID-19 completely transformed the way businesses used to function, remote bookkeeping has been a popular choice, mainly because of the financial savings that come with it when compared to having an in-house accountant.
Before COVID-19 hit
Companies usually save financial documents on a local computer, and an in-house accountant usually works with physical invoices, receipts, and bills. Also, sending such confidential financial documents through emails was not a practice that many businesses enjoyed.
Fortunately, with the arrival of cloud-based bookkeeping software, companies, especially small businesses, are embracing remote bookkeeping services. The documents can be safely uploaded to the cloud-based software, and the remote bookkeepers will take care of the rest. Even if there is a leak of sensitive data, there are people who can be held accountable.
Embracing Remote Bookkeeping Service During COVID-19
An interesting prediction made by Accountancy Age in 2018 was that, by 2020, 78% of small businesses would rely solely on cloud technology. The pandemic has proved that find, made two years ago, to be correct.
Many businesses were hesitant to outsource their bookkeeping needs, mainly because they feared inefficiency. Now that the pandemic has proven remote working to be much more than just possible and efficient than everyone has ever imagined, the popularity of online bookkeeping services is also surging. Let’s take a look at some benefits, and address some concerns related to virtual bookkeeping services that you may have, especially since COVID-19 is forcing everyone to go virtual.
If you are worried about consulting someone a thousand miles away for a question regarding your financial records, you don’t have to consider that as an issue at all. There are several virtual communication tools that you can use to consult them.
Worried about accessing your data? Every remote bookkeeper will have cloud-based software that you can use to access the data that you have uploaded for them to process. You can access the data that they have processed for you too. It’s completely safe.
You can say goodbye to those extra expenses like onboarding, training, insurance, and other benefits that you will have to provide for someone whom you have hired to work in-house as your accountant.
Some paperwork can’t be converted to digital form? Many remote bookkeeping service providers are arranging ways for contactless document collection in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Did COVID-19 change bookkeeping forever?
Probably yes. This pandemic became a catalyst for businesses, especially small businesses, to realize the potential of remote bookkeeping services.
As businesses are getting used to working remotely, the day when bookkeeping goes completely virtual is not far away.