[ForgottenOne]

I do not have any bookkeeping experience, but I come across bookkeeping service ad from time to time. For small businesses, could anyone tell me what is the incentive to use bookkeeping service? How does the work flow? I am assuming business owners take the receipts to bookkeepers. If this is the case, wouldn’t it be more convenience and efficient for business owners to use Quickbooks?

[Anonymous]

I have done bookkeeping as a side gig in the past for small business owners. From my experience, unless you know accounting, no small business owner wants to deal with Quickbooks or has any idea what to do. It's easier for them to pay someone a couple of hundred dollars a month (I used to charge $300 for a basic monthly bookkeeping service) than to deal with it themselves..Oh, and their records are usually a total mess:) You literally get a bunch of receipts, invoices, and banks statements, and have to make heads or tails of it.

[Tncincy]

I've done bookkeeping as an addition to my tax business and sometimes it's a headache. Most small business owners do not see the need to monthly bookkeeping they would rather bring all those receipts and paper to the office to fill out their taxes, but don't want to pay 🙁 …..get ready for drama. quick books is another story…most of the information input is wrong. That's why we're the professionals and they are not. Bookkeeping comes across as easy, like doing taxes but most small business owners or individuals have NO CLUE. Not a bad niche though if you can get some consistent clients.

It begins with a 75
Been here too long as a cheerleader....ready to pass

[Missy]

Well there are plenty of ways to get around taking receipts to a bookkeeper, even many brick and mortar stores are now switching to electronic receipts (for example Sears) so when my client makes purchases at those stores the receipts are emailed to me. Same with ordering online, most will email receipts so thats easy. Or some businesses strictly use credit cards so the credit card statement downloads directly into quickbooks, cash basis clients have me download the bank statement directly into quickbooks and they hold onto their receipts in case of an audit. Most small businesses don't even have the hour or two a week it takes to keep the books up, my client runs a sausage stand at a major baseball park and I'm not even sure he knows how to turn on a computer let alone enter his own receipts. The more time consuming part of bookeeping is reconciliations and analysis, yes someone has to do a sanity check to make sure the deposits that are going to rent income are REALLY rent income, you'd be amazed at how many people can't/won't reconcile a mortgage statement (god bless him he was putting the entire mortgage payment against the liability and not splitting out the interest expense…….sigh) and if there are fixed assets creating depreciation schedules and booking non cash expenses and accruals.

Licensed Massachusetts Non Reporting CPA since 2012
Finance/Admin/HR Manager

[Anonymous]

I think “my client runs a sausage stand” pretty much sums it up.

[Missy]

True but I have to tell you his sausage stand makes in one baseball season what would take me about 6.5 years to make….so I'm thinking I'm the one on the short end here by getting a CPA instead of just a seasonal fast food gig.

Licensed Massachusetts Non Reporting CPA since 2012
Finance/Admin/HR Manager

[Author]

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