If you are thinking of hiring a bookkeeper, then you have made the right choice! Now that your business is growing, you would be using your energy and time to grow your business. But before you hire a freelance bookkeeping, there are some questions to ask them!
If you do not consider asking these questions before hiring, then you may end up causing significant risk in your business!
The hiring of staff or bookkeeping is a task that requires time because you need the best for your business!
Therefore, here are 10 questions to ask before hiring freelance bookkeeping!
- Is there a scope of bookkeeping work?
This question main sounds so simple, but you will find a big difference between the bookkeeping services! Also, the answer will vary according to your requirement and your accounting needs.
Few bookkeepers act like a management accountant and help identify the figures while others are limited to doing data entry work.
Consider what a bookkeeper will do-
- Help to interpret numbers and report
- Prepare budget
- Reconciling bank transaction
- Raising sales invoices
- Entering supplier bills
- Prepare a cash flow forecast
Not all bookkeepers do the same work, so you need to identify first what work you want from them!
- Are they qualified and registered?
Some freelance bookkeepers have accounting degrees, diplomas, or even CPA!
If you want a bookkeeper for lodging your BAS at a minimum, your bookkeeper must be a registered BAS agent! You need a tax practitioner board registration to become a BAS agent!
Registration and qualification need differs from country to country. Hans mixture to ask a bookkeeper about their qualification and their registration to lodging for file sales tax of your country!
Also, remember that not all bookkeepers are specialists and others are generalists. Hence, whenever hiring freelance bookkeeper from dormzi or other agencies, determine your business needs and ensure that a bookkeeper can handle your business need!
If you want a bookkeeper to manage difficult or challenging tasks, then consider hiring is specialized bookkeeper!
- How much is their expertise level?
A Bookkeeper knows how to process your account on time and accurately! Some owners do not hire a bookkeeper, but they don’t realize that I’m a bookkeeper who has a level of expertise to do the work more efficiently! When you talk with them and ask them how they work, you will know their level of expertise!
You can get both detail-oriented bookkeepers as well as a strategic bookkeeper! So your business style will determine what should be the level of expertise of your bookkeeper! You can always work with your bookkeeping to find out the strengths and the weakness of your business.
- Are they familiar with your industry?
A bookkeeper should be familiar with your industry. So before hiring freelance bookkeeping, ask them whether they have experience working with similar industries and ask how they helped the industry resolve bookkeeping issues.
- How the interact with the clients?
A bookkeeper processes day to day transactions in the accounting software. So you may be likely to communicate with your bookkeeper on a regular basis. Hence it is essential to ask how they will be able to communicate with you every day.
A bookkeeper should be able to communicate properly and speak and write in a language that is understood!
If you are going to communicate on phone calls, ask your bookkeeper if they offer phone support. Or, if you are going to contact through email, then ask for their proper email address.
- What is the expected delivery time and response time?
Not every bookkeeper can respond to your mail instantly and work according to the schedule. Thus you should ask a bookkeeper that within how much time they will be able to complete the work and respond to you daily!
- Will you hire a bookkeeper directly, or like to work with a bookkeeping business?
If you hire a freelance bookkeeper directly who isn’t a part of a big community, then ask them about the backup plan. Ask that what will they do in case a bookkeeper is unable are sick or get into some accident? Ask about how they will make sure that your supplier and team get paid and that the customer is paying to you?
Working with a bookkeeping business is is more beneficial. But in this case, the bookkeeping team has different members who do your job. Hence ask them what quality control, as well as internal review procedures, are they using.
- How will they protect your clients?
As a business owner, you are sharing your financial information and other information with a bookkeeper, so you should identify that the freelance bookkeeping your hiring is trustable.
It will be useful if you make segregation of duties between the person doing bank reconciliation and other doing paying bills or raising invoices!
- What price did charge for their service?
You should ask about the charges for freelance bookkeeping!
Ask them whether they charge for a month or by the hour?
Make sure the bookkeeper charges a fixed rate and no extra charges!
- Who will be the owner of the Xero subscription?
It is an important question, and it is suggested that a business owner should hold up the subscription in their name and invite it to a bookkeeper and accountant in the Xero file!
This is because sometimes it can happen that accountants refused to give accessibility to Xero, and this creates a fight over bills. To avoid such disputes, a client should hold the Xero subscription!
So now that you are aware of the 10 questions to be asked before hiring freelance bookkeeping! Now you can hire a bookkeeper for your business very easily!
Always hire book people who are passionate about their work, and their effort shows in the work they deliver! A good freelance bookkeeping will help in meeting your company goals effectively and help them grow!
