Accountskeeping - Online Bookkeeping

Accounting-The Importance
Accounting though an ancillary activity is an important business head. The importance of accounting may vary from business to business. For some businesses, depending on the scale and the area of business operation, accounting may not seem very important and one would only be going about accounting for the mandatory legal stipulations. But all the same accounting is important aspect of business and due attention needs to be given like any other business activity. When used efficiently your accounts give a good picture of your business which can be analyzed to improve your business functioning, be it in cutting cost, increasing sales, increasing ROI (return on Investment)

Accounting for Small Business
If you are a small business owner, a trader or an individual you would usually handle accounting in the following manner:

1. Accounting is Handled by the Owner himself.
2. Accounting is handled by hiring a full time or a part time employee.
3. Accounting is given out to a professional accountant.
4. Accounting is given out to freelance accountants or bookkeepers.

Let's examine each of the cases individually.

1. Accounting is handled by the owner himself.

This is obviously possible where the business is relatively small in scale. The business owner has enough time to handle his own accounting. Usually this is also the case where the owner has individually set up his own business from scratch and usually does all the work related to his business himself. Though there are a lot of benefits of handling the accounting by oneself, the business owner needs not to loose his steam in growing the business. As the business grows and expands he may not get the time to do justice to all the functions of the business as he did when he started the business from scratch. In such a case by handling the accounting, he may be compromising on the growth potential of his own business. The business owner needs to analyze how much value he is adding to his business by handling the accounting himself. This is very easy as he can always find out the cost he would incur, if he hired someone, or if he outsourced his accounting to some accountant. At a particular stage of the business growth cycle , one needs to let go off certain functions and allocate time and resources to activities that are most yielding and fruitful.

2. Accounting is handled by hiring a full time or a part time employee.

Accounting can also be handled by hiring a full time employee, or a part time employee. Of course the cost of accounting by hiring a part time employee, would be less than that incurred by hiring a full time employee. If you are hiring a full time or part time employee to do your accounting, you very well know your own cost incurred for your accounting work. Have you ever considered outsourcing your accounting ? You have to consider this option. These are times of competition and no business can afford the luxury of high costs. There are a lot of professional accountants and bookkeepers available. The charges of different accountants and bookkeepers may vary. You have to evaluate some of them. On site accounting will be of course more expensive. If once you decide to outsource your accounting, online accounting is also very easy, fast and affordable. The cost of outsourcing your accounting with us would be very less, as we are based in India. Many Fortune 500 companies either outsource their work to India or have their own offshore centers in India. Scale is no barrier to outsourcing.

3. Accounting is given out to a professional accountant.

If your accounting is given out to a professional accountant, you would most probably be paying for your accounting based on time. This can turn out to be very expensive. Accountants provide a lot of services, keeping of accounts books (bookkeeping) being just one of them. Maintaining the accounting books is a low value added service. But the accountants time and resources being limited, even the lowest affordable charge for him will turn out to be high on your pockets.
But accountants also outsource client accounting and bookkeeping to freelancers. Why ? Of course, he will only outsource accounting meaning bookkeeping and maintaining records. This is so because it is cheaper to outsource than to hire and handle all the work himself.
Instead of giving out all your accounting work to such a professional accountant, you could use him for value added services, whereas the accounting books and bookkeeping can be outsourced to other special freelance accountants and bookkeepers, whose services are available at much lower rates.

4. Accounting is outsourced to freelance accountants or bookkeepers.

If you are already outsourcing your accounting to freelance accountants or bookkeepers, we don't need to espouse on the merits of doing so. You are cost conscious and want to keep your accounting costs down. Just go through our Rates , and if you find them attractive, you could give us a try. We have a 1 Month Free Trial where you can send us your accounting data and see the work for yourself.