They say tax shouldn’t be taxing, but it can be very taxing if you don’t keep up to date with all your bookkeeping tasks.

When you run a small business, you are reluctant to spend money outsourcing tasks when you think you can handle them yourself.

However, when it comes to bookkeeping and financial data, you can land yourself in a whole lot of trouble if you don’t keep on track with all your financial statements and bookkeeping tasks.

Here we go through some of the things you need to consider and prioritise when hiring a virtual assistant for bookkeeping.

Why Should You Consider A Virtual Bookkeeping Assistant?

Here are the main reasons why a VA can be such a great investment. 

Free Up Time And Become Productive

Hiring a virtual bookkeeping assistant to take care of your company’s financial data allows you to concentrate on other aspects of your business, such as pitching to potential clients.

Accounting tasks can be laborious and confusing if you don’t fully understand what you are doing, especially as your business grows.

Having a bookkeeping virtual assistant will allow you to let them deal with all that complicated accounting software you have never fully understood.

Every business should have specialists in certain areas, which is especially important when it comes to the financial side of your business.

Save On Business Expenses

You will have to pay to hire a bookkeeping virtual assistant, but it will save your company money on business expenses in the long term.

Return On OutsourcingSmall business owners are reluctant to hire bookkeeping virtual assistants because they think they can’t afford to. Still, if you use an exemplary virtual accounting service, you need not worry as the cost is reasonable.

As a small business owner trying to do bookkeeping, you can be confused if you don’t understand how to handle balance sheets and tax preparation properly.

Small businesses often incur extra business expenses when they try to handle the accounts themselves. In extreme cases, it leads to fines which severely damage the company.

Stay Ahead Of Tax Deadlines

Not submitting your tax returns to government tax departments on time will lead to heavy fines, which your business can ill afford.

In some cases, if your tax returns are continuously submitted late, the business owner could take more severe sanctions against them personally and the company.

Virtual bookkeeping assistants are hired to take responsibility for bookkeeping, including keeping ahead of tax deadlines.

The small outlay you pay to hire a virtual assistant for bookkeeping can potentially save your business tens of thousands of dollars in the long term.

What Bookkeeping Tasks Should You Prioritise?

Here are the main tasks you need to look at for outsourcing. 

1. Accounting Entries

Small business owners make the mistake of not making accounting entries a top priority in the day-to-day running of their company.

When you hire a virtual assistant to look after your books, they will need to know how to keep them up to date.

Staying on top of your accounting entries is vital if you stay ahead of the game and do not run into problems further down the line.

Firstly, they will need to enter the account information for each transaction and then enter the debits and credits before moving the entries to a general ledger.

Once this is all done, they will need to calculate the account balances before checking for any financial errors and correcting them if needed.

2. Run Reports

A virtual financial assistant will have experience running financial and statistical reports for your company. 

why real estate agency needs virtual assistantTo write run account reports, your virtual assistant must have extensive knowledge. 

Running accurate financial reports allows your business to plan and put strategies based on how much capital you have to spend each year.

Failure to know your budget will make strategic planning a nightmare year after year.

3. Manage Payroll

Managing payroll is vital, and the virtual assistant bookkeeper you hire must be skilled in payroll management and handling comprehensive financial data.

Knowing how to create a payroll calendar, providing training in payroll tasks, standardising turnover processes and automating your payroll process are all part of the payroll management duties of your virtual accounting assistant.

In addition, they will avoid borrowing from payroll tax funds and stay updated on government tax procedures at all times.

4. Track Financial Transactions

The virtual assistant you hire will have to have experience tracking your business’s financial transactions.

Keeping track of all your financial transactions may seem simple, but as your business grows, the transactions increase, making them harder to track.

This is where a good knowledge and experience of working with accounting software becomes highly beneficial for virtual assistants.  

5. Prepare Tax Reports

Preparing your tax reports can be complicated, especially if you have no experience.

It can prove quite tricky to complete your tax return yourself when you must deal with complicated deductions you need to claim.

When you hire a virtual financial assistant, they will be responsible for preparing your tax report returns for you. 

Many virtual assistants will have multiple clients, so you must ensure they are always ahead of the game with your tax returns.

6. Set Up Invoices

Every business needs to issue invoices, and a skilled virtual assistant will be able to handle setting up invoices for you. 

You must always issue invoices for the product or service and keep any invoices you receive for any expenses you or your staff incur.

Filing copies of all the invoices you issue and keeping invoices you receive is paramount because it helps if the government ever queries your tax returns.

The virtual assistant you hire will take care of all this for you so that you don’t have to stress, allowing you to run your business.

Priority Skills For A Bookkeeping Virtual Assistant

Make sure you understand the necessary skills your VA needs. 

1. Industry Experience

You want to hire someone who can do high-quality bookkeeping, so you don’t have to worry about accuracy.

tasks to outsource to a real estate virtual assistantThey must have experience in your industry but also have experience dealing with cash flow, paying bills, general ledgers, taxable accounts, expense reports, and offering ongoing support for all your overall financial data requirements.

Your virtual assistant will have experience in all money management accounting tasks, not just cash flow and other tedious tasks.

Due to their experience, they should have a decent understanding of the tax laws of the country you are based in. 

2. Skilled In Different Bookkeeping Tools

You may have an in-house team that takes care of your financial records but hiring a dedicated virtual assistant to take charge of everything from your cash flow reports to cloud accounting is the way forward.

The person you decide to hire must not only know about the everyday flow of the financial side of your business, but they must also be highly skilled in using the latest accounting software and communication tools.

Doing so will ensure more effective business practices. 

3. Trustworthy

You would hope that all the people who work for your company are trustworthy, but they must be trustworthy when they handle bookkeeping for your company.

When hiring a virtual assistant, you must do your due diligence to ensure they are a person you can trust. 

However, this is not always easy, so that’s why virtual assistant bookkeeping services are proving popular instead of just hiring blind off a freelance website on the internet.

Virtual assistants should be able to provide references. Still, when you use a company that offers a virtual assistant bookkeeping service, all the background checks have already been done for you.

4. Flexible Availability

One of the best things about virtual bookkeeping services is that they allow you flexibility regarding the tasks you need the virtual assistant to perform.

You may decide that you only need to hire the virtual assistant part-time but then find that your business is growing. It is easy to increase their work hours according to the higher demand during the accounting period.

This can save money for your business, but medium-sized businesses will often fully employ professional bookkeepers even when the cost is far higher.

This degree of flexibility will lead to a more efficient business in the long term.

5. Eager To Learn

Ideal Client ProfileEven the most experienced virtual assistants must be eager to learn new skills. For example, there may be a way they can make their data entry and the general bookkeeping process more efficient.

The person you hire is providing a virtual bookkeeping service, but if they are willing to learn new skills, they could offer your company different virtual services.

Just because they are experienced in virtual bookkeeping doesn’t mean they won’t have other transferable skills that will benefit your company.

Also, it is essential to factor in what the virtual assistant could teach your other staff members to become more effective in keeping track of their expenses to make approving expense reports more accessible.

Let Us Find The Right Virtual Assistant

As you can see, using online bookkeeping services is the way forward when you want to keep your company’s financial affairs running smoothly.

Hiring virtual bookkeeping assistants is not only cost-effective but also saves you time and a load of unneeded stress.

It can be a bit of a needle in a haystack trying to hire the right virtual assistant who is essentially a virtual accountant. 

Sourcing, hiring, training and managing them can be time-consuming, so let us do all that for you.

Call us today for a free consultation to find out how we can provide virtual assistants to take care of all your bookkeeping needs, with minimal onboarding required.

 

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