How to hire a bookkeeper for your business
Your business is growing, and now your attention is diverted into different segments of your business. You decided to hire a bookkeeper, but you don’t know what to look for. We posed this question to several business owners, and they have helped us compile a list of questions to ask before hiring a bookkeeper for your business.
What to ask before hiring a bookkeeper?
The first thing to decide is whether you should hire an in-house bookkeeper or outsource it. While in-house bookkeeping comes with its own set of pros and cons, it’s not as good as outsourcing.
Hiring Gecko Bookkeepers in Brisbane gives you access to a large pool of talented candidates. With that out of the way, let’s five into the questions you should ask before hiring a bookkeeper.
Is your bookkeeping service registered and qualified?
You’ll find that some bookkeepers have a diploma, a degree or might even be Chartered Accountants. Their salaries go up as their qualification increases.
If your lodging is in Australia, then at a minimum, your bookkeeper should be a registered BAS agent. Be sure to ask your bookkeeper’s qualifications and whether they pay taxes in your country.
Remember, some bookkeepers are specialists while others are general. Before hiring, determine your business needs and what level of bookkeeping service you need.
What is your bookkeeper’s level of experience?
Financial matters are sensitive, and the smallest mistakes can break your business budget. You want your accounts to be processed accurately; therefore, you need a bookkeeper with some level of experience.
Hiring a fresh candidate is best for startups, but if you have a running business, the least you should consider is someone with two years of experience. A bookkeeper can accurately process transactions, but an experienced bookkeeper can review their work and identify errors. Plus, an experienced person is ten times faster than a fresh candidate.
How familiar is your bookkeeper with your industry?
Managing accounting books might seem like an easy task, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution. The bookkeeping of a toy store is significantly different from that of a textile factory. Therefore, your bookkeeper should be from your industry.
Sometimes, bookkeepers work with different clients at the same time. Therefore, they have diversified experience. It’s best to ask before passing judgments. You never know a candidate or bookkeeping service you turned down based on their website or CV has skills that would meet your requirements.
How well do they communicate?
Processing day-to-day transactions on your accounting software are one thing, but your bookkeeper needs to be good at communication. You’ll be spending a lot of time talking about how your business works in the first few months.
So your bookkeeper should be quick to understand you and your business. For that, you need someone with good communication skills.
The best way to judge someone’s communication skills is by talking to them. During the interview, start a casual chat and see how the candidate responds. You are looking for logical answers to everyday accounting problems.
Try to complicate your questions by twisting accounting jargon. If you have a strong candidate, communication won’t be a problem no matter how you twist bookkeeping concepts.
How do they protect their clients?
You share your business finances with your bookkeeper, so you need to test if your candidate is trustworthy. You’ll get a better feel for this during the initial screening process.
Asking about the segmentation of roles and scope of your bookkeeper’s previous job gives you an insight into their credibility and how they protected their clients. This ensures you hire the right candidate because you don’t want your financial to be leaked among employees or competitors.
When can you expect deliveries?
A common complaint about bookkeepers is that they take too long to respond. This becomes an obstacle in the workflow because if you want to see your company’s financials, you’ll have to wait and inform them days beforehand. As a result, you need to ask your bookkeepers about their response time during the initial screening process. This saves you the trouble of hiring the wrong service.
Finding the right bookkeeper
Finance is the backbone of every business, and you need a strong candidate or a bookkeeping service for it. The more experienced bookkeeper you hire, the bigger the salary you have to pay, but you can reap more benefits. Working with an experienced bookkeeping service gives you access to a large talent pool. As a result, you find more time to focus on your business while its financial aspects are handled by professionals.
