Here are a few questions that Accounting Girl gets asked all the time:
(Click a question to see the answer)
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Why hire a professional accounting superhero?
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How secure are your services? What is your privacy policy?
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Couldn’t I hire someone for $8 an hour who would do the same things?
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What if we need to audit our books or file our year-end taxes?
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How do you manage payroll?
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Why is it better to have a virtual accounting and CFO service?
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What are the limitations in hiring a virtual accounting superhero?
There are three people who can do your books: yourself, a staff member, or a skilled accountant.
If you’re doing your own books, you’re taking time away from building your business and doing what you love. An accountant’s job is to focus on your business’ financial health so you can concentrate on building your business.
If a staff member is doing your books, it may be a secondary work function and not what you hired the person to do. Most importantly, the staff member may not even have any accounting or payroll expertise. Consistent elementary mistakes can easily be made, and just as easily overlooked for years, causing major accounting problems down the line.
If a professional accountant handles your books, you have a qualified expert who has the experience to set up an efficient system and the skill to post and review transactions correctly.
Security is of the utmost importance. Accounting Girl operates in a secure, paperless environment, thus ensuring that all of your sensitive data stays that way. Confidentiality is taken very seriously around here. Accounting Girl will not share your company’s information with a third party (including financial agencies, vendors, clients, employees, colleagues or spouses) unless previously agreed upon. It is understood that Accounting Girl may communicate with your chosen CPA at any time.
Sure, you could!
But would that person have a degree in Accounting and Business Management?
Would they be a Certified Bookkeeper (exams), Certified Payroll Professional
(more exams) and Certified QuickBooks user (even more exams), QuickBooks Online Certified (one more exam), and have over 20 years of experience?
Would they know the difference between a debit and a credit? How about how to properly record them? Or how to read a financial report?
Would they stay current with payroll ,and sales tax legislation? Would they know how to create complicated journal entries, or adjusting entries? Would they be licensed, insured and bonded, or guarantee their work? Would they take control of their own continuing education, attending CPE webinars and conferences? Would they be able to create a working budget and cash flow projections? These are all services Accounting Girl provides!
For $8 an hour, you would need to train someone on your software program, basic bookkeeping, and organizational tasks. You would need to keep track of their lunch breaks, monitor if telephone calls and emails are business or personal, and make sure they’re not constantly checking Facebook or texting their friends.
You will need to pay payroll taxes, health and unemployment insurance, worker’s comp insurance, and reimburse expenses, like gas mileage for trips to the bank. You will also need to keep all sensitive data under lock and key so they don’t know how much money Joe down the hall gets paid, or have access to your credit card information.
Most importantly, when hiring someone to do bookkeeping for $8 an hour, you will need to factor in CPA fees for fixing errors. So your 20houraweek $8anhour inhouse bookkeeper will end up costing you close to $3,000 per MONTH, bolded and underlined. Accounting Girl’s monthly fees are a small fraction of that cost – and a lot less work for you!
Accounting Girl has alliances with CPAs, EAs, and tax resolution specialists
across the country. She will help you find the right fit!
When you have a third party, like Payroll 1 or ADP, process your payroll, we use their reports to enter the information into QBO so that your financial records will always be up-to-date. When using a third party payroll processor, Accounting Girl can also act as intermediary. If Accounting Girl processes your payroll, we offer FREE direct deposit to both employees and independent contractors, e-filing of all tax liabilities and forms, and seamless integration with QBO.
● You save money by avoiding the costs of hiring an in-house employee: recruiting, training, salary, payroll taxes, insurances, equipment and furniture costs, office space, etc.
● Your sensitive information is stored securely off-site.
● You have a skilled team who knows what needs to be done. Less managing, and more doing, equates to a growing business!
● You can spend your valuable time growing your company rather than worrying about troublesome accounting, payroll, and tax tasks.
There are two main limitations:
Accounting Girl cannot be on-site to physically perform inventory tasks nor physically make the bank deposit.
However, there is a work-around to the bank deposit issue.
