Having a bookkeeper to handle your routine bookkeeping tasks is essential, but enlisting the services of skilled accountants in Sydney can significantly enhance the accuracy and completeness of your financial records while also providing numerous additional advantages.
A good bookkeeper should be able to offer you the following:
- Handle all sales invoicing and debtors’ reconciliation.
- Handle all suppliers’ payments and creditors’ reconciliation.
- Give you timely financial accounts that will be meaningful and useful, so you can monitor your cash flow more effectively.
- Your financial records and accounts will always be reconciled on time to allow for the lodgement of government reports like BAS and wages reports to avoid any ATO fines and penalties.
- Ensure your staff superannuation payments are reported and paid on time to ensure that super expenses are deductible (Did you know that if you pay your staff super late, you will lose out on the tax deduction and bear extra administration fees and costs?).
- Understand the importance of complex transactions and taxation issues and seek help and advice if and when required (after obtaining your approval).
- Should be experienced and can work with the bookkeeping software that you use for your business (e.g. Xero or MYOB live).
- Paying staff and maintaining staff entitlements can be very time consuming and complicated at times (i.e. tax withholding, super payment and leave entitlements) – a good bookkeeper should understand this area and can help you manage your staff payroll.
- Understand basic accounting concepts to ensure that assets purchased and finance transactions can be recorded and allocated correctly in the financial accounts.
- Self-organised and can follow through with all regular tasks and jobs that need to be done each week (either monthly or quarterly) to allow you, as the business owner, more free time to work on the business.
- Can work with computers and, at a minimum, be able to handle essential office software such as Word, Excel, PDF and email systems.
If your bookkeeper is happy with reconciling the bank accounts, then he or she is not doing enough. The more the bookkeeper does, the more use we can make of their work when we do year-end and tax planning. You can use the above list to work out what other things your bookkeeper may be able to do for you.
If you are finding holes in the work level after reviewing the above list, we may be able to help fill the gaps. At Stanley & Williamson, we have a bookkeeping division called “Measured Success”. Our team of dedicated bookkeepers are trained and developed especially to offer our clients all the above services. With regular interaction with our professional team, they can provide a finished product which makes our job easy and allows us to have confidence in the source data received. This can keep costs down and ensure year-end and tax planning is done efficiently and accurately.
Should you have questions in relation to the above list or want to know more about Measured Success, please do not hesitate to contact your client manager.
*Correct as of October 2015
*Disclaimer – Kreston Stanley Williamson has produced this article to serve its clients and associates. The information contained in the article is of general comment only and is not intended to be advice on any particular matter. Before acting on any areas in this article, you must seek advice about your circumstances. Liability is limited by a scheme approved under professional standards legislation.
