Use your Accountant’s in-house Bookkeeper

You’ve got to the point where you need to offload the bookkeeping hat. You don’t have enough time or expertise to do the bookkeeping anymore, and you need to focus on working on your business instead of in it.

There are lots of great independent bookkeepers out there, and many bookkeepers offer an amazing service. This blog is definitely not meant to discredit the work that independent bookkeepers do. However, we believe that the best solution to the problem is to use your Accountant’s in-house Bookkeeper, and here are our ten reasons why!

1. Ongoing Tax Expertise

Many times during the year, we get asked what VAT rate should be applied to a certain invoice or how close a customer is getting to a certain tax threshold. Without having full access and control of the bookkeeping, it is impossible to provide accurate, timely, and affordable advice. For an Accountant to provide ongoing tax advice, they need to know the full picture.  Without using your Accountant’s in-house Bookkeeper, it is a challenge to provide efficient and timely ongoing tax advice.

2. Better Communication – No more being piggy in the middle

There are often times when Accountants need information that the Bookkeepers hold. As Accountants, we contact our Customers, who then contact the bookkeeper, which often leads to unnecessary communication back and forth. Having everything in one place ultimately saves time and unessential correspondents.

3. Accounts and Bookkeeping Software synchronisation

When your Accountant finalises your Accounts, they will have extracted information that they need from your bookkeeping software. We often see Accountants that don’t go back into the bookkeeping software to update the bookkeeping records. This means that the bookkeeper doesn’t have up-to-date financial information. At EOG Accounting, we ensure that any adjustments that have been made for your finalised Accounts will be recorded within your Xero bookkeeping software, leaving you with up-to-date financial information.

4. Enhanced business reports and strategic assistance

Accountants are trained to provide business owners with key financial reports, which allow business owners to make strategic business decisions. For Accountants to be able to provide these reports and advice, they need to be confident that the information that they are providing the reports and advice upon is complete and accurate.

If the Accountant has not completed the bookkeeping, they are likely to have to do several, often expensive, checks to ensure that the bookkeeping is of the required standard before they can provide their reports and advice. To provide the reports in a timely manner, they are also relying on an external party. The external bookkeeper needs to provide them with the necessary information to deliver the reports and advice, which can slow down the delivery time.

5. Save Tax

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard: “our Accountants don’t offer us any tax advice; we just get a bill at the end of the year”. Well, my first question is, does your accounting firm do your bookkeeping for you? The majority of the time, the answer is no.

“Would you expect a Personal Trainer to prepare a fitness plan without doing a health check?”. I wouldn’t! What would you say when they prescribe daily 15-mile runs, but since the last time you’ve seen them, you’ve seriously injured your knee? It’s not possible to prescribe the correct advice unless they are aware of your circumstances!

Equally, for your Accountant to offer you Tax advice, they need to know your exact financial position. It’s too late after the year-end; that year’s been and gone. For effective tax planning and advice, your Accountant needs your bookkeeping up to date and completed to a level that they are happy to rely upon. They need to know your circumstances before supplying useful advice.

If anyone else does the bookkeeping without several (potentially expensive) checks, there’s no way the accountant knows that the information they’re basing their tax advice upon is reliable.

6. Critical Health Checks

Each time your bookkeeper finishes your Bookkeeping for a period, a month, a quarter, wouldn’t it be great if your Accountant would have a look over it? To make sure that there’s nothing you need to be aware of; no overdue tax liabilities, no large outstanding bills, check you’re not spending too much, and check money isn’t going missing. Well, if your Accountants are in charge of your bookkeeping, they can, and at EOG Accounting, we do.

Each time we finish a bookkeeping job, an accountant checks for all of the above and more before providing our reports. If there are any issues, we will contact you to make you aware of any situation.

7. Synchronised Tax Ledgers – VAT and Payroll

Often it is your Accountants that provide you with VAT and Payroll services, but not always the bookkeeping. If you don’t use your Accountant’s in-house Bookkeeper, it’s difficult to keep track of your Wages Payable, PAYE, and VAT Accounts.

So, let’s say you get a payslip from your Accountant, and they say pay Gill £2,000.00; you accidentally pay her £3,000.00. Gill leaves you four months later. Unless you have a full bookkeeping system in place which tracks your VAT and Payroll ledgers properly (which your Accountant will have if they do your bookkeeping), then you can easily lose money on a regular basis, just with typos! Good luck trying to get the money back from Gill!

8. Finalise your Accounts and Tax Returns quicker

If your Accountant’s in-house Bookkeeper does your bookkeeping and has all of your information to hand, what’s stopping them from finalising your Accounts soon after the year-end? You should only have to supply a few odd bits, which will allow them to complete everything. They can then let you know how you performed, and how much tax you have to pay, meaning there are no nasty surprises!

9. Ownership of responsibility

When everything is controlled by one entity, it is impossible for the finger to be pointed elsewhere.

10. Reduce Accountancy Fees

At EOG Accounting, if our customers take out our Bookkeeping service, we are confident that everything is going to be in order at year-end. This means there will be less work required to finalise the Accounts. Therefore, customers who use our Bookkeeping service pay less Accountancy fees!

What we offer

Check out this infographic for a full look at our Bookkeeping Service at EOG Accounting. See how it can put you in control of your business’ finances.

Get in touch

If you are interested to see how our bookkeeping service can benefit you Book a Discovery Call today.

This information is subject to change and is not professional advice. Refer to our disclaimer for more details.