Tag: outsourcing

The Benefits of Hiring Independent Contractors for Your Business

As a business owner, you’re constantly faced with decisions that impact the success and growth of your company. One such decision is whether to hire employees or independent contractors to meet your business’s needs. Hiring independent contractors can offer numerous advantages, and understanding the benefits can help you make an informed choice for your business.

1. Cost-Effectiveness: One of the most significant advantages of hiring independent contractors is cost-effectiveness. Unlike employees, independent contractors are not entitled to benefits such as health insurance, retirement plans, or paid time off. This means you can save on payroll taxes and other employee-related expenses, resulting in significant cost savings for your business.

2. Flexibility: Independent contractors provide a high level of flexibility for short-term or project-based work. Whether you need extra help during peak seasons or require specialized skills for specific tasks, independent contractors allow you to scale your workforce as needed without long-term commitments.

3. Specialized Skills: Independent contractors often bring specialized skills and expertise to the table. By hiring contractors with unique talents, you can access high-quality work and knowledge that may not be available within your existing team.

4. Reduced Administrative Burden: Hiring and managing employees comes with various administrative responsibilities, from payroll processing to compliance with labor laws. When you hire independent contractors, many of these administrative tasks are often handled by the contractors themselves, easing your administrative burden.

5. Limited Liability: Independent contractors are responsible for their own business operations and liability. This means that you may have reduced legal exposure compared to hiring employees.

It’s important to note that misclassifying employees as independent contractors can lead to legal issues and fines. Make sure to adhere to legal guidelines and the CRA criteria for determining worker classification.

Discover the seamless experience of working with our expert team. Let us handle your business finances while you focus on growing your business.

Is Outsourcing the Right Option to Grow Your Business?

Outsourcing helps you abandon the mindset of “I can do it all myself” and offload boring back-office tasks and hand them over to professionals with better expertise and reasonable costs.

Before outsourcing, consider:

  • If you can afford and have the monthly budget of the services
  • If the costs incurred by outsourcing benefit the business in any way
  • If you are equipped to handle the task on your own
  • If outsourcing helps you focus on the strengths of the business

Here are the advantages of outsourcing:

  1. Increased productivity. Many entrepreneurs think they can do everything, but by eliminating the most time-consuming tasks, you can focus on tasks that make a huge difference in meeting the goals of your business.
  2. More time. Time is a limiting factor, you can spend your valuable time dealing with more important tasks like providing the best customer service and improving your ROI rather than wasting your time managing your bookkeeping.
  3. Expert services. Outsourcing allows you to hire an expert for a specific task without dealing with the risk of degraded quality. By outsourcing the right work to more qualified professionals, the books are handled timely and accurately than if business owners handled the same thing themselves.
  4. Cost-effective. Recruiting and training people is expensive and time-consuming; there are other hidden costs to consider as well. You will be able to harness the expertise of a professional without breaking the bank or incurring high overhead costs.
  5. Investing in other growth areas. Comparatively, it is much more affordable to get a task done by a professional externally rather than paying a monthly salary to a hired professional within the business. This increases your budget in other areas.

Outsourcing can bring significant benefits to the business. If you’d like to learn more on how we can help take managing your business finances off your plate and help you grow your business, schedule a call with us today!

Hiring Bookkeeper

The Benefits of Hiring a Bookkeeper for Your Small Business

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Did you know that hiring a bookkeeper for your small business could actually save you money? Making mistakes add up, especially if those mistakes result in an audit or even bankruptcy. Plus, 30 percent of small businesses fail within two years and it’s because their expenses outweigh their profits. Yikes! So it’s clearly important to keep an accurate book—and what better way to do that than by hiring a professional bookkeeper?

There are so many benefits to hiring a bookkeeper for your small business. We’ve listed the top 8 reasons here:

1. Dedicate Your Time To Your Core Business Needs

As the founder of your small business, it’s best to stick with what you’re good at. Unless you’ve founded a small accounting business, chances are your strengths lie in other areas… And those other areas need your full attention.

There’s no better way to free up your time so that you can focus on what you’re best at than by leaving the financials in the hands of a capable bookkeeper. With the time that you aren’t spending floundering on your books, you’ll have time to devote to strategy, marketing, funding, and other key areas that require your focus. You’ll have peace of mind knowing that your books are accurate and real reports to show you your profit and loss and other key reports to help you grow your business.

2. Improve Your Work-Life Balance

As a solopreneur or founder of a small business you’re busy, busy, busy! There’s so much to do and while being a hands-on business owner is crucial to any business’ success, you still need some time at the end of the day or week for yourself and your loved ones. No matter how great of a multitasker you may be, every person needs balance in order to stay healthy and not burn out.

Burn out is a serious risk for entrepreneurs and as much as you may think that you can do it all, at some point the stress will catch up with you and your business will suffer. So if you want to see your business grow, don’t forget to make some “me time” Letting a bookkeeper handle the finances will take a huge load off your shoulders!

3. Two Heads are Better Than One

Of course, you’ve got a handle on your business—you rock and we don’t doubt it! But it never hurts to have a second set of eyes to help catch mistakes, catch things that the first set of eyes might have missed, or to give a fresh perspective on the state of your business.

A bookkeeper won’t just put the financials in order; they’ll also run reports that show how you’re really doing each month, where the funds are going, and how your efforts are paying off. By having a professional crunch those numbers, you’ll be able to get the big picture and ensure the growth of your business.

4. Avoid the Monotony

We’re sure that your business lights a fire in your soul that motivates you every day, but it’s still hard to imagine that the financial aspects of your business are what get you out of bed in the morning. You likely have no passionate feelings about excel spreadsheets full of numbers or keeping track of payroll. That’s ok! Because your bookkeeper actually enjoys those tasks!

It makes sense to hand over your financials to someone who really does get excited about numbers. Not only will you benefit from not being dragged down by a task you don’t like and haven’t been particularly trained for, but you’ll also be able to pump twice as much enthusiasm into your business; your own, uninterrupted enthusiasm plus the energy from your passionate numbers person. It’s definitely win:win.

5. Get Everything Paid on Time

Did you know that if you miss a bill or forget to pay something important, it will significantly impact your business credit? Uh oh! Between meetings with clients,  troubleshooting daily issues, and focusing on the future of your startup, it’s quite likely that things fall through the cracks along the way.

Often bills that need to get paid are forgotten. Avoid the stress of late bills by putting a bookkeeper in charge! And what about collections? You don’t want to forget to collect your money, do you? Your business can’t afford to let money matters slip. With the help of a reliable bookkeeper, you can rest assured that everything is paid on time and you can get back to doing what you love—running your small business.

6. Take the Hassle Out of Tax Time

Even if you’ve finally figured out payroll and you’ve got a system down for outstanding invoices, when it comes to filing your business taxes you definitely don’t want to make a mistake. Based on the type of business structure you’ve created for your startup, you’ll have many tax requirements, HST payments, and other filings. This can be a major point of stress for many business owners!

The first great thing about working with a bookkeeper throughout the year is that when it comes to tax season, everything will already be organized. This is HUGE in terms of stress management! Your bookkeeper will have already won most of the battle by keeping your books in tip top order.

Secondly, as for your final tax details, a bookkeeper is a pro; they’ll know what tax credits are available to you and how to optimize your tax filing for the best possible results. It’s ideal to find a bookkeeper who can handle your taxes in addition to payroll and other financial issues for full peace of mind and no headaches.

7. Keep Your Cash Flowing

Late payments are a problem for many small businesses, and that’s true for your own clients who owe you money. This can put a serious damper on your cash flow. Often your clients will have outstanding invoices and these can start to really drag your business down.

Seeing as you’re so busy, you may not realize that there are late payments infringing upon the cash flow you need to keep your startup running smoothly. But having a bookkeeper working for you will help you stay on top of these issues.

Your bookkeeper can send out reminders to make sure your cash flow remains optimal and, bonus, this will look good if you ever decide to seek out funding because you can show a positive cash flow that you might not have been able to show without that financial help.

8. Keep Costs Down

Although it may seem logical to do everything yourself to save money, that’s not actually the truth of most small business dealings. In fact, a professional bookkeeper actually saves you money because there’s a reduced level of risk from human error, lack of knowledge, missed payments, tax obligation due dates, and delayed accounts receivable.

As we’ve all heard before; time is money. You need to be smart about how you choose to use your time. The time you spend on your books could be used instead towards bringing in more clients, delivering excellent customer service, and bringing in the revenue to see the growth you want.

Plus, there are many options for hiring a bookkeeper and rather than bringing someone on payroll full- or part-time, a freelance bookkeeper can be very cost effective. When you outsource your bookkeeping to a professional who is themselves a business owner, you don’t have to pay payroll taxes, sick leave, vacation, etc. that you would have to pay when hiring an in-house employee keeping your costs down even more!

Outsourcing your bookkeeping is quite possibly the smartest step that a small business owner can take towards their overall business success. From saving time and money, to focusing on your expertise, and increasing cash flow, a bookkeeper makes good business sense for your startup.

 

Here at the Number Works we’re always excited to help out small business owners. We would love to get behind your success. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us today!

Benefits of Outsourcing

Unless you are an accountant, you likely didn’t start your own business to crunch numbers and balance your books. In the interest of time, money and quality, outsourcing to an expert can be beneficial.
5 benefits to outsourcing are to:
Reduce Costs – hiring, training and monitoring staff in areas that you aren’t familiar, such as HR or finance, can be costly.  Outsourcing these tasks will reduce your overhead, you only pay for what you use and can ensure it is a qualified professional that you won’t need to train.
Increase Efficiency – by removing the stress of tasks that your business doesn’t specialize in, allows time for you company to focus streamlining your business and doing more with less.
Improve Quality – by focusing all of your resources on the aspects of the company which drive the product for the end user, and outsourcing effectively the areas that you don’t specialize in can lead to an improved quality product or service.
Reduce Risk – with a rapidly changing market and environment of government regulations, technologies, and financial conditions, outsourcing to those that specialize in these areas can help to guide your business decisions to avoid taking unnecessary risks.
Drive Results – by hiring the right company to help with back office tasks that you don’t specialize in,  allows you the time to spend on what you do best, focusing on the core of your business needs.

Focus on what you do the best, and outsource the rest. Contact us to outsource your accounting needs.