Have you ever wondered if your outsourced bookkeeper is doing a good job? With accounting software like QuickBooks Online (QBO), small business owners have total transparency and access to their numbers 24/7, you just have to know what to look for. Keep reading for 10 things to check if you outsource your bookkeeping.
1. Access to Your Books
Do you have online access to your company’s accounting software? Is your bookkeeper unresponsive or holding your books hostage? If you needed to log in right now, would you know how? Do you have the basic skills needed to navigate the software, find transactions, and run reports? Are you (or someone on your team) designated as the Primary Admin with rights to add and remove users?
As the business owner and QBO account owner, you should have access to your books in QBO and your role should be ‘Primary admin’. The Primary Admin has access to every part of the QBO account, including adding and removing users. If you’re not sure about your role or access, ask your bookkeeper to review this with you. And if you are not the Primary Admin, ask your bookkeeper to transfer this role to you.
If you’re not comfortable navigating around the software, I encourage you to make learning basic software skills a priority. Not sure where to start? Ask your bookkeeper for training, or head over to YouTube which has loads of free training, search for Hector Garcia CPA, one of my favorite accounting YouTubers.
2. Clear Communication
Regular and direct communication goes a long way to build trust between a bookkeeper and a business owner. I cannot underscore the importance of consistent and clear communication enough. It’s the only way a bookkeeper will understand your needs, preferences, expectations, challenges and business goals. And it’s essential for promptly addressing questions and discussing changes that might impact the numbers.
If you’re not communicating effectively with your bookkeeper, it may be time to make a switch. Here are some things to consider:
- Do you have an agreement regarding how you’ll communicate?
- Does your bookkeeper have an established policy for responding timely to requests and do you know what that policy is?
- Do you repeatedly send follow-up emails to your bookkeeper to remind them about a request, concern or question?
- Do you have to ask for a meeting or phone call to get your bookkeeper’s attention?
- If you’re not getting timely and accurate financial reports, do you know why?
- Does your bookkeeper tell you they can’t close the books because they’re waiting on you, but you don’t know what they need?
Clear and consistent communication is not only the responsibility of the bookkeeper, it goes both ways. If communication is poor, are you keeping up your end of the bargain? Your bookkeeper cannot do the job without your cooperation.
Here are some questions to ask yourself:
- Do you delay answering your bookkeeper’s questions or providing information necessary to close the books?
- Are you intimidated by finances and hesitate to ask questions?
- Do you have a clear understanding of the scope of the bookkeeping work and additional fees for out-of-scope work?
- Do you have unrealistic timelines and expectations?
Good bookkeepers love a proactive and transparent approach to communication because it builds trust, gives clients peace of mind, and goes a long way to nurturing long-lasting relationships.
3. The Three R's
Reconciling, comparing the bank or credit card balance in QBO to the bank’s records, is a critical first step to ensure your books are complete and error-free. Did you know it’s important to reconcile loans too? I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve found loan balances that don’t tie to the bank’s records.
Good bookkeepers have an established reconciliation process to make sure nothing gets missed. But did you know a bookkeeper’s job isn’t done once the accounts are reconciled? There are three steps to the reconciliation process, which I like to call The Three R’s:
- Reconcile
- Review
- Resolve
Reconciling is the first step in the process, but the next two steps are also essential. Step 2, review, is the process of reviewing reconciliation reports for old uncleared transactions, and Step 3, resolve, is the process of investigating and cleaning them up. What are old uncleared transactions and why clean them up? Old uncleared transactions are discrepancies between the records in QBO and the bank’s records. Discrepancies can indicate errors and have potential risks. A good bookkeeper will follow the 3 steps in the reconciliation process and address discrepancies promptly. If you want to know if a reconciliation process is being followed in your books, ask your bookkeeper.
4. Tax-Ready Numbers
Your tax accountant needs clean books for estimating the taxes you’ll owe and preparing your company’s tax return. Not having tax-ready numbers can delay filing your tax return and increase the cost to prepare it, which means unnecessary stress for you.
What do I mean by tax-ready numbers? I’m talking about accurate financials, of course, but it’s more than that. Depending on the type of tax form filed, prior and current year balance sheet numbers are reported on the tax return. If adjustments are made by your bookkeeper after the tax return for that period has been filed, the adjustments will impact rolling forward the balance sheet for next year’s tax return. That is why one of the first steps in preparing a business tax return is to check retained earnings on the balance sheet to see if any adjustments were made.
If you engage separate firms for tax and bookkeeping, the tax return filing process will be smoother and more efficient with clear communication and cooperation on both sides. Ask your tax accountant for an honest assessment of the health of your books at tax time. Ask them if your bookkeeper is responsive and easy to work with. On the flip side, ask your bookkeeper about what it’s like working with your tax accountant.
Here are some things to consider to ensure you have tax-ready numbers:
- Do your bookkeeper and tax accountant work together and make things seamless for you at tax time?
- Is your bookkeeper knowledgeable about business taxes?
- Has your tax accountant commented that your books are a mess or do they make a large number of adjustments before preparing the tax return?
- Does your bookkeeper follow a checklist, especially at year-end, to ensure the books are tax ready?
There should be accountability and respect on both sides for the best possible experience for everyone, including you. A good bookkeeper loves it when tax time is stress-free.
5. It’s a Match
Did you know that your books and your tax return should match? A good bookkeeper will have a process in place to ensure consistency and accuracy between the return and your books.
How does a bookkeeper do that? As part of the year-end close process, your bookkeeper will request a copy of your business’s tax return and compare it with the data in QBO. They may review some key areas of the return, including the balance sheet (Schedule L), payroll expenses, employee wages, officer compensation, contributions to retirement plans, state income tax payments, net income, depreciation, and owner distributions on Schedule K-1.
If the tax accountant makes adjustments to the numbers, your bookkeeper may ask for a copy of the adjustments in order to record them in QBO. And if your bookkeeper is responsible for paying the company’s taxes, they will read the tax return package cover letter to identify taxes to pay now and estimated taxes to be paid in the future.
If you’re not sure how your books correlate to the numbers on the tax return, ask your bookkeeper about their tax return comparison process. And don’t rely solely on the bookkeeper to compare the tax return and the numbers in QBO. U.S. tax laws are complex, but you don’t need to be a CPA to review a few key areas of a business tax return. Ask your tax accountant to review your business tax return with you. Sure, accountants are busy at tax time, but they will welcome the opportunity to answer your questions and strengthen the client relationship.
6. Connection
Why am I bringing up connection in a discussion about your bookkeeping? Because when your business bank accounts are not connected, transactions are not automatically downloaded from the bank and must be added manually. Not only is this inefficient, but by not utilizing QBO’s automation, a bookkeeper is opening the door for errors and inconsistencies.
Do you know if ALL your business bank and credit card accounts are connected? I can’t tell you how many prospective clients come to us and have unconnected accounts. Connecting accounts and maintaining that connection requires collaboration between the bookkeeper and business owner, and unfortunately sometimes that collaboration doesn’t happen. If you’re not sure that all your business bank accounts are connected, ask your bookkeeper to review them with you.
7. Backup
A good bookkeeper understands the importance of having backup for all manual transactions, especially journal entries. I can’t tell you how many times I have reviewed a new client’s books and found journal entries with no explanations or supporting documentation.
What are journal entries and why do they need backup? A journal entry is used to record a business transaction. In QBO, journal entries are manually added to adjust the financial records and your bookkeeper should have a good reason to do this and should be able to back it up.
Journal entries are sometimes necessary, for example, to record depreciation or correct errors, so don’t be alarmed if you see them. The important point here is about having backup, an explanation and/or documentation attached that supports why the adjustment is needed. In QBO, supporting documents can be attached directly to transactions for reference. If you’re not sure that you have the proper support, ask your bookkeeper about their process for recording journal entries and how they back them up.
8. Details Matter
A good bookkeeper will ask questions (sometimes LOTS) and communicate on a regular basis to minimize errors and inconsistencies in recording transactions. Does your bookkeeper ask questions on a regular basis? Do they ask about new vendors in order to understand how to categorize expenses properly? Do you have balances month over month in temporary holding accounts such as ‘Uncategorized Expenses’, ‘Suspense’, ‘Uncategorized Asset’ or ‘Ask My Accountant?
Details matter. Why? Because complete and accurate transaction details are essential to run meaningful reports and accurate numbers are essential to make informed business decisions. Armed with information gained through asking questions, a good bookkeeper will be able to fill in the details and properly classify transactions. They will also be able to complete a transaction-level detail review of your books, which is a fundamental part of the monthly close process. One of the best ways to do that in QBO is to scan the general ledger report.
What is a general ledger? It’s a report of all historical transactions organized by account type (assets, liabilities, income, and expenses) and account name. By asking questions and scanning the general ledger, your bookkeeper can efficiently find and correct issues, such as miscategorized transactions and missing vendor names. If you want to ensure that details matter in your bookkeeping, ask your bookkeeper about their process of collecting and reviewing transaction details.
9. Compare and Contrast
A good bookkeeper will have an established review process, including reviewing comparative financial reports, such as month-to-month or year-over-year, which helps to identify errors and inconsistencies. If you want to know more, ask your bookkeeper about their financial reports review process. But don’t rely solely on your bookkeeper to review the numbers. No one knows your business better than you do.
Does your bookkeeper provide financial reports for you to review, and do you receive them at least 30 days from the end of the period? And when your bookkeeper communicates the reports are available, do you look at them? You may not fully understand the reports yet, but I highly encourage you to review key items on the reports and ask questions if things look off.
Here are some things to look for:
- Are the sales numbers what you are expecting?
- Is revenue consistent or increasing month-over-month?
- Are you operating more efficiently resulting in increasing profitability?
- Do payroll expenses look reasonable?
- Do the balances in your bank, credit card and loan accounts appear correct?
- Do you have large negative balances on the Balance Sheet?
- Do you have a large balance in Undeposited Funds?
- Do you have negative income or expenses on the Profit and Loss statement?
Once you get in the habit of reviewing the reports, you’ll start to identify errors and ways to make the reports more meaningful to you. You’ll also gain insights into the company’s performance which will help you make business decisions. If you have questions when you review, ask your bookkeeper to go over the numbers with you.
If you're not getting comparative reports, ask your bookkeeper to add them to the reports package. A good bookkeeper loves clients who care about their numbers.
10. Validate
Some of the most common errors I see when assessing the health of a client’s QBO data are related to payroll transactions, especially benefits such as retirement and healthcare contributions. A good bookkeeper will make an effort to understand all the ins and outs of your company’s payroll in order to record payroll transactions accurately. And a good bookkeeper will go the extra mile to validate and reconcile the payroll data in QBO with the payroll reports and payroll tax filings on a regular basis and also at year end.
How will they do that? Your bookkeeper may request online access to your payroll platform to pull reports or they may ask you to provide reports, even if they are not responsible for managing payroll. When getting started with a new bookkeeper or when you make changes to the company’s benefits, your bookkeeper may ask questions, such as: What type of retirement plan is in place? Does the company have a matching contribution? And does the company pay a portion of owner or employee healthcare premiums?
Do the payroll numbers reported on the tax return match up to what’s in QBO? Does your tax accountant make adjustments in your books to match total wages on form W-3 at year end? If you’re not sure that payroll is properly recorded, ask your bookkeeper about their process of reviewing and reconciling the payroll data in QBO. And if your payroll numbers look off, ask your bookkeeper to explain them to you.
If you still have questions about what to check if you outsource your bookkeeping, connect with us!