Perks of Hiring a Virtual Bookkeeper VS an In-House Professional

There are many perks of hiring a virtual bookkeeper instead of a 9-5 in-house professional. One of the top perks that comes to mind is cost efficiency. What business owner doesn’t love being cost effective in all aspects of their business? If you have a small or medium sized business with minimal employees, it is typically best to hire a bookkeeper that works on their own schedule. Contrary to what you may think, hiring a virtual bookkeeper means you get timely reports, up-to-date reconciliation, and easy and effective bookkeeping support all on a reduced rate. If you hire someone in-house who works full-time or even part-time, you could be spending a vast amount of money keeping them on payroll and providing them benefits.

This leads me to my next point, time effectiveness. A virtual bookkeeper is someone who runs their own business, so this means, they want to create their own time efficiencies while still being effective and on top of their bookkeeping work for each of their clients. This is where time effectiveness comes into play. If you have an in-house professional keeping up with your bookkeeping, are you aware of how much time they actually dedicate to running your books?

Like I stated above, a virtual bookkeeper runs their own business platform, so cost efficiency and time effectiveness are two top ideas that are important to not only you as a business owner, but to virtual bookkeepers as well.

Another idea that is high on the list is flexibility. Bookkeepers who work virtually live for a flexible schedule, which not only benefits them, but can also benefit you as well. Two major perks that I consider apart of flexibility are accessibility and access to expertise. With a flexible schedule, you may see quicker response times (depending on the bookkeeper); which include responses before or after hours of your business operation and even weekend responses.

With a virtual bookkeeper, you can count on having access to your financials with minimal documentation needed from you, the business owner. Most documents are sent via email or through other platforms creating efficiencies for accessibility for both the owner and bookkeeper.

The other advantage is access to bookkeeping expertise. Most virtual bookkeepers will have a particular niche or a few niches they enjoy providing services for. The more clients they have with a particular bookkeeping niche, the more versed they are with that field of business. What a sigh of relief! Now you know, that your bookkeeper will maintain and carry expertise throughout the time they have with your company.

The last of many key perks of hiring a virtual bookkeeper is scalability. You may ask yourself, how can a virtual bookkeeper be scalable? The answer is simpler than you think. With the support a bookkeeper provides, they can easily adjust to growing business conditions. This means increased transaction volume is handled accordingly, the need for add-on services such as payroll or taxes is a possibility (for some, not all virtual bookkeepers offer a variety of services), adaptation to seasonal peaks in hiring, and increased learning opportunities that virtual bookkeepers can invest in to help better the financial flow of your business.

Overall, hiring a virtual bookkeeper can be super beneficial to you as a business owner. A bonus perk, I will add, of hiring a virtual bookkeeper is the ability to hire a single person for all of your businesses. If you have multiple businesses, choosing to hire virtually versus an in-house professional is ideal for bookkeeping consistency. In conjunction with all of the other perks (cost efficiency, time effectiveness, flexibility, accessibility, access to expertise, and scalability) you may consider hiring someone who can best help your business keep consistency with your business records across the board.

If you are considering your option of hiring a virtual bookkeeper or an in-house professional, I would definitely consider weighing the perks mentioned above to better understand what works best for your business. On average, small and medium sized businesses benefit better from hiring a virtual bookkeeper versus an in-house professional. At the end of the day, your budget is a bookkeepers priority, so these efficiencies can go a long way when making a hiring decision for your business.