There are some accountants in London who will provide flexible and detailed bookkeeping services for clients, and yes there is a difference between the work required with regard to accountancy services and to deliver expert bookkeeping.
So what do you need to know or consider when you are choosing the best bookkeeping service for your business?
Let’s take a look.
A starting point
The first thing is to understand what a bookkeeper does for your business, then decide the level of service you need. This might sound a little dramatic, but you will find out why it’s true as your bookkeeper plays a critical role in your success or failure.
Consider the location and if you’re based in London or near London, you will be better off with accountants in London who offer bookkeeping services as well.
Hiring a bookkeeping service to manage your books can help you identify potential risks and opportunities, as well as ensuring the integrity of your financial data. Even those business owners with some experience will benefit from professional bookkeeping help and advice.
Protect your business by taking time to find and hire the right bookkeeping partners, and if they also offer full accountancy services, then running your business just got easier.
The search parametres
So you have decided what your business needs in terms of bookkeeping services, and the level you feel you need.
As small business accountants, our checklist would be as follows:
Ensure they are fully qualified.
Although certificates on the office wall are not everything, you should be looking at the level of qualification and expertise the bookkeepers have in looking after small businesses.
If you have business software for your company and are technically minded, you will need a bookkeeper who is using up to date software, and can download transactions, import payroll and provide reports remotely to save time and to keep you fully apprised of any issues.
From the moment you contact them with your inquiry, how well do they communicate? Do they answer calls and emails in a timely fashion, did they come back to you swiftly with answers to your questions? As experienced small business accounts we know the value of effective communication with clients and ensure that our accountancy services and bookkeeping services deliver good communication with clients.
Is it too much to expect them to be friendly, no.
It’s important that a relationship is built and that you don’t feel like you are dealing with a non-personality. Well mannered professional personality goes a long way to building client confidence, and if they have to represent your business at any time, you will want to be confident of their aptitude to do so in a social setting.
Professional accountants in London and bookkeepers like ourselves, take great pride in calling many of our clients friends.
But above all you will want to be confident in their abilities with numbers and financials as well as their honesty and integrity. Professional bookkeepers are data driven and take great pride in solving problems. The relationship must work both ways and they should feel comfortable about contacting you when you have exceeded your budget or overdrawn your account and alert you to any sign of potential financial or inland revenue problems.
Another key factor for any good bookkeeping service is making sure they are always updating their knowledge of the laws and regulations. In the United Kingdom, things can change quickly and seemingly change regularly, which is why small businesses who try to do their own bookkeeping or HMRC returns, can often run into problems that can end up costing a lot of time and money.
With regard to this requirement, it goes for both accountancy services and bookkeeping as they will both need to be aware of rule changes.
These” basic careful checks” will deliver service providers with a range of skills offering a sphere of bookkeeping services for small businesses. Depending on the size and complexity of your business.
Things like Income and expense tracking, client or customer invoicing and accounts receivable management, “bill payment” and accounts payable management, payroll and benefits administration, will often be an integral part of an experienced bookkeeper’s services.
Closing Time
Accountants and bookkeepers are not just there to provide basic services, they are an integral part of the growth of your business and you will quickly realise how much more time you will have to devote to sales, pricing, product delivery and growing the business.
You will find that the best small business accountants and the most professional accountants in London, provide comprehensive bookkeeping services, for your total peace of mind.
We do.
