Accountant or Accounting Services: What to Choose?

Accounting functions are the backbone of any business. If you thought you could start a business and continue carrying out accounting work by yourself, you might be badly mistaken. As a business takes off, it may go through phases of high performance and low performance. However, accounting and bookkeeping will be connected to it from the time you begin the first transaction for the business.

Bookkeeping is a basic function, keeping track of each and every transaction that takes place in the business, whether with clients or with suppliers and vendors. This means, recording not just sales and purchases of products and services or money owed, but also invoices, unpaid bills and money that is to be paid out by the business.

So Why Not Just Hire an Accountant?

Hiring an accountant should be on every business’s to-do list. An accountant will track the finances of the business, as outlined above, and also conduct essential core functions, such as carrying out tax work and putting together the business’s financial report.

Accountants are a skilled resource and can prove to be an expensive hire. This is also the reason why many new businesses choose to carry out their accounting and bookkeeping by themselves. But as a business starts growing, there is a high chance of missing out on recording of transactions, eventually affecting year-end tax calculations.

How About an Accounting Department?

An accounting department will not only take care of accounting services and requirements, but also ensure that your business stays profitable while continuing to grow. But here is the problem:

Setting up an accounting department can prove to be intensive in terms of expenses: accounting professionals are expensive to hire and accounting software, should you choose to invest in it, is also an expensive purchase.

Instead, you can choose to let your business’s accounting be handled entirely by professionals in an outsourcing arrangement. Consider the following:

• You may not have a whole lot of accounting work to do; you may not need a dedicated full-time resource for this.
• Like most startups, you may initially choose to carry out everything yourself. But the costs of doing so can be high: if you look at accounting errors alone, you will realize the significance of limiting the errors.
• When you tap into professional expertise, you not only cut down on errors and gain reliable work, you also earn free time which can then be utilized to pursue new business opportunities or other business building activities.

There are other benefits to choosing accounting services:

• An outsourcing services provider will help you control costs. You will cut down on expenses needed to set up and run an in-house department complete with software and staff
• Professional expertise at your fingertips means you not only get accounting services and solutions, but also add value through business insights on budget and business plans, etc.
• Apart from handling taxes, an accounting services provider will also help you with critical inputs on saving money through judicious application of tax laws. Tax laws differ, depending on the type of business set-up you have.

A Last Word

As an owner of a fast-growing small business, you may have started your company with a vision of building something big. If you are caught up with the basics and core, essential elements, you may not have the time to continue your pursuit of your dream.

When you choose accounting services, you also choose to pursue your original plan of business building with greater clarity and peace of mind even as your accounting is take care of.

The team of professionals at Analytix Solutions has expertise to help strategically guide small businesses in managing financial functions, including accounting and bookkeeping services.  We are currently offering a free analysis of your business processes and accounting system.  If you would like to learn more on how Analytix Solutions can help your business forward, please call us today at 781.503.9002 or email us sales@analytix.com.

These are our views. We’re interested in knowing about you. How do you manage your business’s accounting? Please share your experiences with us. We’re waiting to hear from you!

Written by

Analytix Editorial Team