Introduction
If your company has reached the point where you need to hire a bookkeeper, one of the first considerations you must make is whether to go with onsite or virtual accounting. You’ve probably heard of onsite bookkeeping or have dealt with bookkeepers in the past.
However, although onsite accounting offers advantages, it also has significant drawbacks, especially for startups. Virtual bookkeeping improves your company by providing access to thousands of accounting experts who can keep your books in order without ever having to set foot in your office.
If you’re unsure if a virtual accounting service like Job Lamp is ideal for your company (or if you’re thinking ‘What is virtual bookkeeping?’), keep reading to find out what it entails and which sorts of companies may benefit the most from using one.
What exactly is virtual bookkeeping?
Conventional onsite bookkeepers, hire a bookkeeper handle day-to-day financial responsibilities such as documenting transactions, reconciling bank and credit card accounts, and processing payroll.
The main distinction is that a conventional bookkeeper must be physically present in your office to do these activities, while a virtual bookkeeper manages everything remotely using cloud-based software. Remote or online bookkeeping are other terms for virtual accounting. The following are some of the primary advantages of virtual bookkeeping:
- More accounting industry resources, including professionals with expertise in highly specialized sectors.
- On-demand insights for important financial KPIs to help you make better data-driven choices.
- Monthly, quarterly, and yearly reports will be sent on schedule.
- You’ll get access to a large staff of CPAs and bookkeepers with relevant industry knowledge.
As with any person or service you would consider employing to assist handle your company’s money, you should ensure that the individual’s work is dependable, accurate, timely, and complete.
You may engage a remote bookkeeper as a full-time or part-time employee of your firm, outsource the task to an independent contractor or freelancer, or use a remote accounting service to optimize your finances. When you use a bookkeeping service, you have the advantages of working with an entire team of specialists, such as a wider variety of bookkeeping experience and the ability to cover extra bookkeeping duties and accounting services as required.
What kind of financial services may a virtual bookkeeping service provide?
Remote finance teams may manage all of the day-to-day duties of hire a bookkeeper and more complex accounting services such as economic predictions and analysis, annual taxes, and compliance requirements. Remote bookkeepers may provide these services with a broader scope by using the knowledge of a team of financial experts and AI-driven software that executes some computations and accounting procedures automatically.
Startups receiving venture capital backing, for example, may be required to produce monthly updates to prevent delinquency. Accurate reporting is critical, but if a company cannot locate in-house financial specialists with expertise with monthly reporting standards, it may struggle to provide accurate reports on a consistent timeframe. Similarly, a local accountant may be well-versed in small company taxes but inexperienced with research and development (R&D) credits for seed and venture-funded businesses.
These issues may be addressed by using virtual bookkeeping services. Job Lamp provides customers with access to financial specialists with knowledge in various sectors and organizational structures and timely feedback when needed.
Is virtual accounting a realistic choice if your business depends on paper documentation?
Yes, and remote hire a bookkeeper service may assist you in identifying realistic strategies to transition away from physical accounting systems.
While most businesses have gone digital, paper-based accounting is still very widespread. Approximately 25% of small enterprises still utilize manual accounting systems (with no digital component). Paper-based accounting is time-consuming and risks human mistakes, yet for specific firms, the transition to digital bookkeeping may seem impracticable. If your company gets a significant quantity of physical invoices, you may imagine that digitizing such papers might cause a bottleneck. That’s not the case, as long as you’re using the correct tools.
Virtual accounting is an excellent match for organizations willing and able to go paperless and replace the requirement for accurate paper invoices and receipts with cloud services. Several options are available, for paperless billing and invoicing, Expensify for employee reimbursements, and new banking and credit card firms like Brex with built-in receipt management capabilities and paperless statements. These solutions make it simpler to migrate your company’s back office to the cloud.
Moving from physical paperwork to cloud-based services, on the other hand, might be a daunting task. Virtual accounting services, such as Job Lamp, may assist you in locating financial solutions that fit into current processes, freeing up your time to focus on building your company.
