Congratulations on starting your new business venture! It is challenging and rewarding and no day is the same. The key to making it all work is to automate and delegate when and where you can. One of the best things to both automate AND delegate is your bookkeeping.
Starting your business with good bookkeeping practices early, will take a large load off your plate down the road. It is easier to catch mistakes in the beginning than it is to catch them in the end. These mistakes can be extremely costly and come with other consequences such as jail time or seized property if not caught and corrected in time.
Do not be worried about having the money to pay for a professional regularly. My recommendation is to find a professional that understands your industry first. Be intentional. The goal is to find YOUR bookkeeper/accountant. Explain to them what you are looking for and what you need starting out and sign on to work with them.
For example: You are starting an Etsy store and you have some inventory just recently purchased for the products you make.
What you need: A bookkeeper/accountant who understands e-commerce, particularly the Etsy space and 3rd party merchants that work with Etsy. In this scenario, the bookkeeper/accountant can create an Excel workbook for you that includes a place for customers, inventory tracking, cost of goods sold, additional items list, and your reports so that when you are ready to move to a sophisticated accounting system, the transition will be seamless; all while monitoring the workbook for errors, omissions, categorization errors, etc.
The professional bookkeeper/accountant can set up your accounting system, create your chart of accounts, and input all the information from your spreadsheet into your accounting system; giving you your historical data as well as the current data. Your chosen professional is there to advise you on the financial health of your business, offer cost/benefit analysis on any new endeavors, keep you abreast of all the new tax laws, and do their best to help lower your tax liability and increase your profits.
As new business owners, you may not think you need the accounting right now. You may even have others in business that you know tell you that they waited. Do not let them distract you. It is always better to have this system set up right in the beginning when the chances of IRS audits are low than to spend thousands of dollars getting the mistakes corrected because you are being audited.
AMH Bookkeeping, LLC can help. Schedule your discovery call now and let us get you started on the right foot with your financial management.
