Should I Hire a Bookkeeper or Do It Myself?

I always think that a business owner’s time is worth thousands of dollars an hour in potential income. Now, this, of course, depends on where you are with your company. If you just started your company yesterday, you might not be ready to hire a bookkeeper. You do need to do some bookkeeping if there is any money coming in and going out, but you could learn how to do it yourself temporarily and just have someone come in quarterly or annually to review all your transactions and make sure all is correct for your tax returns. 

Once you are making enough money, it is worth the expense for you to pay a bookkeeper, so absolutely get a bookkeeper because in the same way you would not try to pull out your own teeth – you would go to the dentist – you want a professional to handle your bookkeeping. 

You’re always going to be sacrificing either time or money. 

If you are a new business and you have not gotten to the point where you are making a lot of money, yet, you are going to have to sacrifice some time and do some basic bookkeeping yourself. If you are at a point where it is more beneficial for you to pay some money to have someone do the books for you, then absolutely pay the money.  As you start delegating, you will be able to make more money. A bookkeeper, a good bookkeeper, is going to be able to do it faster than you can, and do it right, saving you money.

I have had so many clients ask me, “Well, how long will this take you?” I told them, “Oh, I don’t know, two-three hours a month.”  It was taking them much longer, 10 -15 hours a month. And they were ripping out their hair trying to figure out how to handle one transaction, making it take them take even longer. 

You get so much peace of mind by hiring a professional to do your bookkeeping for you. If you cannot hire them to do it for you, hire them to review it for you. You will end up saving time and money. 

As a business owner, you started your company because you wanted to do what your business does. If you are an artist, you started the company because you wanted to create art. If you are an actor, you started the company because you wanted to act. If you are a carpenter, you started your company because you wanted to work with wood. If you are a marketing professional, or creative in marketing, you started a company because that’s what you wanted to do. Right?

Then, suddenly, you walked into your office and there was a pile of paperwork from the IRS that you had to fill out, which you could not understand. You are stressed out and frustrated and you do not know who to ask for help.  Googling, you can get five different answers on the first Google page alone. You are not sure which is the right one, which one applies to your situation. And you know the local CPA charges a thousand dollars a minute so you’re not sure what to do…. Sound familiar?

You are going to want to hire a bookkeeper, even if only to help you with the things that you don’t understand. You can pay them as a consultant at first, even if just to review your work. But again, you are not going to run into any of this until you start making money. The most important things are production and selling your product or selling your service. Once you start making some money, you are going to want to have a person that you can ask what to do, even if you have to pay them a little bit of money.

Personally, I offer free consultations and answer many questions in that first call. I try to solve at least one pain point in the first free consultation, so they know what they should be doing and what they can do next. 

So, to address the question again, hiring a bookkeeper can be done gradiently, depending on what you need them to do, but it is always good to have a person that you can ask questions of so you can do what you wanted to do when you started your business.

Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or would like a free consultation!

Sincerely,
Maya Weinreb | Founder & CEO
813-336-1574