Many business owners dislike bookkeeping and accounting, often doing this work late at night or on weekends when they prefer to spend time with family and friends. Despite this, they continue to manage their finances themselves due to a do-it-yourself (DIY) mindset and the belief that hiring an accountant is a luxury. They often wonder, “Why not work later and do the books myself?”

This mindset needs to change. Hiring an accountant or bookkeeper is not just a lifestyle choice; it’s a strategic business decision. Investing in professional help—or reevaluating how you utilize their services—can yield significant returns.

Accountants and bookkeepers can help you stay on top of your tax obligations, identify potential savings, and support the growth of your business. Additionally, they can free up your weekends, allowing you to focus on what truly matters. Engaging their services effectively is essential to ensure that your investment yields the best results.

Here's what you might be overlooking:

As a small business owner, you often handle many tasks independently due to limited outsourcing funds. When considering whether to seek external help, it is important to weigh the risks and costs associated with doing things yourself.

Here are some potential downsides of managing your bookkeeping and accounting:

• You may miss tax breaks by failing to claim valid expenses.

• You might fall behind with invoicing and chasing unpaid accounts.

• You could underestimate your tax bill, leading to trouble with the government.

• Late filing of tax returns and other compliance paperwork can result in fines.

• Mistakes in your books can take hours to correct.

• You may not have reliable information to guide your business decisions.

Why you need to get an accountant or bookkeeper

Accountants and bookkeepers can significantly benefit your business in various ways. Here are some key areas where they can provide immediate assistance.

Clean Up Your Books Once And For All

When business owners handle their own bookkeeping, it's often only done when they find the time. This approach doesn't provide the financial records the attention they deserve, resulting in:

• Data entry errors

• Lost documentation (such as receipts for expenses)

• Missed tax deductions

• Outdated financial records

Hiring an accountant or bookkeeper can resolve these issues by ensuring accurate records are supported by proper documentation. They can also set you up with software that simplifies and speeds up the process of recording future income and expenses. This way, you’ll never fall behind again and won’t have to pay someone to catch up on your data entry.

Make Sure To Handle Your Taxes Correctly And On Time

Failing to file or pay your taxes on schedule can lead to penalties and interest. By hiring an accountant, you can avoid missing deadlines. A good accountant will plan, making tax filing smooth and stress-free. You’ll quickly forget the anxiety of tax season.

Additionally, an accountant can help you pay less in taxes. If you work with them at the beginning of the year and utilize their tax planning services, they can develop a strategy that allows you to keep more money in your business.

Enhance Your Invoicing and Cash Flow

Your invoicing system is crucial to the financial health of your business. If you don’t bill efficiently, you won’t receive payments promptly, leaving you short on cash. Although it may seem basic, this issue undermines many businesses.

For instance, consider plumbing and heating engineers who service a building. They typically send an invoice two weeks after completing the job, allowing 30 days for payment. If the business owner pays on time, the engineers' company is left waiting more than six weeks for cash flow, even though the employees were paid the week the work was completed.

Consider hiring an accountant or bookkeeper to set up an automated invoicing system to streamline your invoicing process. This system can help you:

• Send invoices promptly.

• Monitor the status of payments at any time.

• Offer customers various payment methods.

Additionally, accountants and bookkeepers can provide valuable advice on invoice payment terms, which can help minimize the time you spend waiting for money to arrive.

Gain the Power to Make Better Decisions

When you handle your bookkeeping independently, delaying getting started is easy. Other tasks can interrupt your progress, and mistakes can happen since you’re not a robot. This often means you don’t have reliable, up-to-date information about your business.

Falling behind in your records limits your ability to manage effectively. You might not know how profitable your business is or how much cash you have to invest in improvements.

By hiring an accountant or bookkeeper, you ensure that you always know your financial standing. You’ll be able to track income and expenses as they occur, giving you a clear picture of your short-term cash flow and long-term profitability.

The AVN, an association of accountants dedicated to making UK owner-managed businesses the most successful and enjoyable to run globally, researched this issue. They discovered that four out of five businesses fail within five years due to the following reasons:

• Lack of experience in record-keeping

• Insufficient knowledge of financing

• Inaccurate tax payments

An accountant or bookkeeper can help you navigate these common challenges.

Boost Your Profitability

Accountants can help you unlock growth in your business. They will begin by eliminating unnecessary costs and improving your cash flow, but their support goes beyond that. They will identify the factors that drive revenue and profit in your business and help you enhance them.

These factors will serve as your key performance indicators (KPIs). When a KPI increases, so will your revenue and profit. KPIs enable you to make informed strategic decisions.

KPIs in Action

Consider a roofing business whose revenue depends on the number of new jobs it secures. It can’t win any jobs unless it provides estimates, and it won’t be able to give estimates if it doesn’t answer the phone. This can be challenging, especially when it is working at heights.

An accountant might track the following metrics:

• Calls answered

• Estimates given

• Jobs won

If a strong relationship exists among these three metrics, the accountant would recommend that the business owner invest in an answering service. They would even project the expected return on this investment.

KPIs like these can be easily monitored using Crunchboards or Spotlight. An accountant can help set these up for you, allowing you to identify areas for continuous improvement within your business.

Getting the Best Value From Accountants and Bookkeepers

Maximising the value you receive when you hire an accountant or bookkeeper is essential. Focus their efforts on addressing problems or identifying opportunities that enhance your business's profitability.

It's all about return on investment, so avoid burdening professionals with labour-intensive, low-yielding tasks such as:

• Finding and correcting errors in your records

• Reconciling bank accounts

• Reconciling control accounts

• Rushing to meet tax deadlines

While these tasks are essential, they typically do not add significant value to your business; they are primarily catch-up work. By spending time on these activities, you may quickly exhaust your accounting budget without gaining access to truly valuable services.

To optimise your investment, look for an accountant or bookkeeper who can automate your bookkeeping processes. Modern accounting software can automatically capture all your business data—including sales, expenses, payroll, inventory, and more—with minimal human involvement.

This approach allows professionals to dedicate less time to resolving past issues and more time to saving you money and improving your business. Ultimately, maximising your return on investment should be a top priority; no one understands this better than an accountant.

Hiring An Accountant Or Bookkeeper Is A Vital Business Decision

Business troubleshooter Sir John Harvey-Jones stated, “Leaders should only do what only they can do.” Don’t let bookkeeping distract you from your core responsibilities, as it’s not where you’ll add the most value to your business.

A professional accountant or bookkeeper brings expertise that can help you to:

• Lower your tax burden

• Avoid fines, interest, and audits

• Identify and eliminate unnecessary costs

• Measure and improve business performance

By delegating these tasks to a professional, you can focus on growing your business, where you can truly make an impact. Additionally, this decision allows you to spend more quality time with family and friends, which is one of the great perks of making a wise business choice.