If you own a small business, interested in minimizing a portion of your payroll, considering outsourcing your current bookkeeper or accountant, and someone in your family is not working, outsourcing to family may be a viable alternative for you.
Outsourcing your accounting or bookkeeping functions may result in reduced payroll costs, or the conversion of fixed costs to variable costs, insurance, benefits and some tax savings, etc. However, before you start outsourcing, you will need to invest in a quality fax machine or scanner. The type of fax machine or scanner depends on the volume and frequency of documents(i.e. vendor bills,customer invoices bank statements, etc.) to be scanned and sent to your outsourced accountant. Scanning or faxing is necessary because all of the source documents have to be sent either by email or fax to the outsourced accountant to record the bookkeeping transactions.
As a business owner or the person responsible for the financial department, you must also make sure there is a process in place to monitor the activities of the outsourcing company. An important consideration is that outsourcing may make sense, as long as a competent and independent person oversees and monitors the financial results on behalf of the small business owner.
It's is often advertised that if you outsource to a foreign country, then your labor expense will be less than what you would pay in the United States. However,when small business owners are facing issues such as contraction, business survival or, to make an already bad or problematic situation worse, family unemployment, it may make sense to employ the family to help with the small business accounting. By employing a family member in your house or outsourcing your accounting function with family in a distant location, rather than some outsourcing to another country, you may actually help, in your own way, the balance of payments for the United States by keeping jobs in this country. Not a bad idea during these times. This strategy should work,if the owners or members of the owner's family are able to learn QuickBooks, or some other comparable online accounting software program. Its also helpful that the family member have some basic financial knowledge to undertake this responsibility of entering the financial information into QuickBooks. Given the current economy in the United States, there are situations where family members are recently unemployed and are now available to help make a contribution in the family business.
Quite frankly,QuickBooks Online Plus is simple enough that with proper training, most detail oriented people with common sense can handle QuickBooks, as long as a CPA or accountant is available to ask questions,and there is mechanism to allow for real time or after the fact corrections or adjustments to the accounting records.
Under either option, outsourcing to a foreign country or to a family member, an accountant or CPA is the ideal person to monitor either in real time, or after the fact i.e. monthly or quarterly financial information, and to check that the reconciliation process is working and more importantly, that the outsource team or family member,are doing their job.
With the correct QuickBooks Online or other QuickBooks versions with remote access, it is possible for your CPA or accountant to remotely monitor an outsourced accounting department, whether the outsourced department is in a distant location or outsourced to family.
If you decide to outsource, then you should speak to your CPA or accountant in order to ascertain if whether or not outsourcing is appropriate for your particular small business accounting situation. The CPA or accountant is best suited in helping you evaluate the potential skill set of the person to provide the outsourced service.
Outsourcing to one or two family members will not work for a large or mid size business. But, if you own a small business, interested in minimizing a portion of your payroll, thinking about to outsource your current bookkeeper or accountant, and someone in your family is not working, outsourcing to family may very well be a viable alternative for you. This should work as long as the outsourced family member is supervised and checked by your CPA or accountant. In the beginning there will be more time required by your CPA or accountant to teach and to oversee as compared to the time that your accounting professional currently spends each month or quarter. Overtime, your accounting professional will spend less hours in monitoring. Notwithstanding, some time will always be required of your accounting professional to monitor the activities of the outsourced person.
Outsourcing your accounting or bookkeeping functions may result in reduced payroll costs, or the conversion of fixed costs to variable costs, insurance, benefits and some tax savings, etc. However, before you start outsourcing, you will need to invest in a quality fax machine or scanner. The type of fax machine or scanner depends on the volume and frequency of documents(i.e. vendor bills,customer invoices bank statements, etc.) to be scanned and sent to your outsourced accountant. Scanning or faxing is necessary because all of the source documents have to be sent either by email or fax to the outsourced accountant to record the bookkeeping transactions.
As a business owner or the person responsible for the financial department, you must also make sure there is a process in place to monitor the activities of the outsourcing company. An important consideration is that outsourcing may make sense, as long as a competent and independent person oversees and monitors the financial results on behalf of the small business owner.
It's is often advertised that if you outsource to a foreign country, then your labor expense will be less than what you would pay in the United States. However,when small business owners are facing issues such as contraction, business survival or, to make an already bad or problematic situation worse, family unemployment, it may make sense to employ the family to help with the small business accounting. By employing a family member in your house or outsourcing your accounting function with family in a distant location, rather than some outsourcing to another country, you may actually help, in your own way, the balance of payments for the United States by keeping jobs in this country. Not a bad idea during these times. This strategy should work,if the owners or members of the owner's family are able to learn QuickBooks, or some other comparable online accounting software program. Its also helpful that the family member have some basic financial knowledge to undertake this responsibility of entering the financial information into QuickBooks. Given the current economy in the United States, there are situations where family members are recently unemployed and are now available to help make a contribution in the family business.
Quite frankly,QuickBooks Online Plus is simple enough that with proper training, most detail oriented people with common sense can handle QuickBooks, as long as a CPA or accountant is available to ask questions,and there is mechanism to allow for real time or after the fact corrections or adjustments to the accounting records.
Under either option, outsourcing to a foreign country or to a family member, an accountant or CPA is the ideal person to monitor either in real time, or after the fact i.e. monthly or quarterly financial information, and to check that the reconciliation process is working and more importantly, that the outsource team or family member,are doing their job.
With the correct QuickBooks Online or other QuickBooks versions with remote access, it is possible for your CPA or accountant to remotely monitor an outsourced accounting department, whether the outsourced department is in a distant location or outsourced to family.
If you decide to outsource, then you should speak to your CPA or accountant in order to ascertain if whether or not outsourcing is appropriate for your particular small business accounting situation. The CPA or accountant is best suited in helping you evaluate the potential skill set of the person to provide the outsourced service.
Outsourcing to one or two family members will not work for a large or mid size business. But, if you own a small business, interested in minimizing a portion of your payroll, thinking about to outsource your current bookkeeper or accountant, and someone in your family is not working, outsourcing to family may very well be a viable alternative for you. This should work as long as the outsourced family member is supervised and checked by your CPA or accountant. In the beginning there will be more time required by your CPA or accountant to teach and to oversee as compared to the time that your accounting professional currently spends each month or quarter. Overtime, your accounting professional will spend less hours in monitoring. Notwithstanding, some time will always be required of your accounting professional to monitor the activities of the outsourced person.
About the Author:
Sandor Lenner,C.P.A.-M.B.A has been providing accounting services for companies for 35 years. He is also a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor and offers QuickBooks support while working as a part-time consultant with Susan Missal Lenner, P.A. . Subscribe to our free monthly newsletter on timely accounting, tax and small business topics. We will not share your email address with anyone.
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