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Whether you like it or not, as a business owner or as an entrepreneur, you need to document all income and expenses for tax purposes.

Good bookkeeping helps you to track your finances and make sure that you are not losing money. Here are six reasons to outsource your bookkeeping:

1) Reduce your workload
The first benefit is decreasing your work load, and instead of doing the book work yourself, you can have someone do your bookkeeping.

2) Outsourcing bookkeeping services is cost effective
Outsourcing bookkeeping services for your Gold Coast business is much more
cost effective than having your own bookkeeper in the office. You’ll save more money for your business or minimize your overhead cost.

3) Dangers of DIY Bookkeeping
DIY bookkeeping can be time consuming, and you can soon get overloaded with book keeping work taking time away from your business.

4) Outsource Bookkeeping To Save Time and Money
Outsourcing to professional bookkeepers will not only save you a lot of time and money, but it will also increase the efficiency of your business and the way you run it.

5) Run a Smoother Operation
By outsourcing your bookeeping it will help you run your business much smoother, and you can be sure that it will be much cheaper to outsource it than having an in-house book keeper.

Start saving money and run your business more efficiently by outsourcing book keeping for your Gold Coast small business.

Perhaps there’s a Queensland Government directive from the health minister to ensure that all telemarketers enquire about the health of their potential victims

When regular clients contact our Gold Coast bookkeepers and bookkeeping services, their first question is along the lines of whether we can help them with their particular bookkeeping problem.

The advantage of the telemarketers enquiring about our health is that straight away we can ask them if they are trying to sell something.

It’s a simple question that has one of two answers – Yes or No.

When our Gold Coast bookkeepers respond with that question there’s normally some sort of hesitation in the mind of the telemarketer, as they ponder whether to lie and lose a sale, or tell the truth and lose a sale.

Either way, by that time they’ve lost the sale and the call has ended.

It’s amazing what we’ll find when we run a health check on the bookkeeping of some Gold Coast businesses. contact our Gold Coast bookkeepers and bookkeeping servicesfor details

When’s the last time that your business has had the experience of a Gold Coast bookkeeper’s health check?

We’ve been getting a number of enquiries from people asking us to lodge their tax returns. As bookkeepers on the Gold Coast, we are not registered tax agents and so we are not authorised to lodge tax returns. What we can do is to help you with your paperwork, and get everything ready so that you can submit all the documentation to your accountant or registered tax agent

What does knowing the hourly rate for bookkeeping really tell you?

There’s sense in phoning around different electrical stores if you are looking for a certain model fridge or washing machine. People will drive around passing different servos looking at fuel prices. What you are doing is comparing apples with apples. The only other variables may be delivery charges or whether you can get discount for a cash sale (obviously with fuel there’ no negotiation)

When it comes to bookkeeping rates, what does knowing the hourly rate for bookkeeping really tell you?

Many bookkeepers contact us wanting to know how much they should charge for their bookkeeping services. They phone around other bookeepers and ask their rates, then take an average that they feel comfortable with and decide to charge that rate.

There’s bookkeepers that believe they’ll pick up work quicker if they charge low fees. Perhaps is the “Two Dollar Shop” principle of high turnover and low profits.

How much a bookkeeper charges can vary tremendously. How do you compare apples with apples?

Being a professional book-keeping service on Queensland’s Gold Coast, knowing what rates other bookkeepers charge doesn’t really help us ascertain if that bookkeeper is proficient in what they are saying that they can do.

One wonders, then, how a small business owners can ascertain which bookkeeper to select, just by enquiring about the bookeeper’s rates.

How much a bookkeeper charges can vary tremendously. The problem is in trying to compare apples with apples. It’s different hunting around for a price of a certain model fridge or even motor car. It’s common knowledge that buying a car at the beginning of the month or at the end of a month can make a big difference in your negotiations.

Asking Gold Coast Bookkeeping rates will not help you determine the level of bookkeeping skills that you are paying for. We’ve had clients wanting to negotiate our rates by a few dollars per hour – yet when we’ve asked them if they’ll discount their fees to their clients they look at us like we’re from another planet.

How does saving a few dollars per hour on your bookkeeping fees really help your bottom line? Often you’ll find that bookkeepers that are charging a lower rate are not confident in what they are doing. Or they may lack experience in certain areas, or they are just not proficient in what they are doing.

Last week a bookkeeper approached us looking for employment. She had a string of certificates and diplomas, she had more letters after her name than in her name. She was a member of every bookkeeping association in Australia. But was she any good at bookkeeping?

It seems that she’s spent so much time studying and learning theory that she’s not had much time to get her hands dirty in the trenches, doing the hard yards and getting some experience under her belt. Were we impressed by her qualifications? Not really. She’s put a great deal of time and effort and sacrifice into studying, that we do acknowledge.

Bookkeeping is bookkeeping, and hasn’t changed in principal since before Charles Dickens was using a quill pen.

Do they still teach double-entry bookkeeping to young bookkeepers? Who knows. But without that solid foundation of understanding the principles involved, who cares whether you can use a MYOB or Quickbooks software program.

When asking a Gold Coast bookkeeping service about the rates you need to be asking this : Will you be getting the level of service that you need, and will that service be value for money.

We may not be the cheapest bookkeeping service on the Gold Coast, but we’ve saved our clients so much more in accounting fees, and helped tighten up their business operations, taken stress away from small business owners, and benefitted those businesses in far more ways than money can buy

Our Gold Coast bookkeeping rates are geared to give clients value for money, and we end up with clients for life.

To the business client, the result is that certfied MYOB bookkeepers have to charge higher fees to make up for the fact that they, in turn have to pay MYOB high fees for the “priviledge” of being certified.

MYOB themselves should be certified!

They are currently running an assesment course for bookkeepers to become certified. Their timing is impeccable – Simply sit and pass the online Entrance Assessment before 25 October and those “lucky” book keepers will be able to take advantage of (some) great benefits.

MYOB may have the same calendar as the Federal Treasury, and maybe they also don’t really know what bookkeepers do at this time of year. October, February, April and July are busy months for bookeepers preparing BAS statements for their small business clients.

So what can be a better time for MYOB to run an assesment program for certified book keepers than the first three weeks of October!

Any book-keeper who is competant to become certified by MYOB will be working flat-out throughout October to ensure that all their clients’ bookwork is uptodate and ready for the Quarterly Business Activity Statement [BAS] reports that are due on 28 Otcober 2009.

We are at a loss to understand why MYOB would beleive that those same bookeepers would have nothing better to do than to sit for a competancy test just before the BAS deadline.

Like many large companies these days, MYOB are not interested in their end users, they are only interested in their bottom line.

Do they care how the end users, or professional partners are treated? Not if you listen to John Moss, who’s one of their managers. He’s interested in the internal runnings of MYOB, but his attitude is that MYOB partners will come and go, for whatever reasons they choose. Does he care? Well, he pays lip service to that, but his actions speak louder. ….. Next …..

Does he care that the MYOB level of support is such that clients turn to professional bookkeepers rather than going to MYOB support? Not really – MYOB is only interested in selling their software. That’s why they bombard business owners with campaigns telling them why those business owners need to upgrade their MYOB software.

Small business owners understand the importance of customer service – if there’s a problem that’s brought to their attention by a client, they’ll do whatever it takes to remedy that problem.

MYOB, on the other hand, feel that a simple “sorry” will fix everything. Not surprising that they have such a high turnover of support staff at MYOB. The management obviously do not care about their staff, and so their staff really do not care about MYOB customers. MYOB doesn’t care if they stuff things up so that a bookkeeper loses a client – after all, they are only interested in selling software.

A number of bookkeepers that we’ve spoken to are weaning their clients off MYOB and moving them to other software such as Quickbooks – this could be a move that others will be following. Why would you recommend a software company that really doesn’t want to provide after sales support?

“How much will it SAVE me to outsource my bookkeeping?”

Small business owners are always concerned about their outgoings, and the first question that they ask a prospective bookkeeper is about their hourly rate.

Would it be fair to assume that the question that you really want answered is “How much will it save me to outsource my bookkeeping?”

How much it will cost to outsource your bookkeeping is not a straight forward mathematical equation of [Bookkeeper's rate] multiplied by the [time spent].

There’s other factors to consider, such as:

• how much time will be saved out of your day?
• How much time will be saved knowing that the job will be done correctly?
• How much stress will it save you?

  Have you considered what you could be doing with the extra time that you are in effect “buying back”? And is your time worth more to your business than the cost of your bookkeeper’s time?

  All these factors are also dependant on whether you regard your bookwork, and having a handle on the financial side of your business, as an expense or an investment.

  Unless you can compare apples with apples, shopping around for bookkeeping rates will not answer your question. It’s not like you are buying a specific make and model of fridge and trying to find a hardly normal price from your local electrical retailer.

  A good bookkeeper is hard to find, is a valuable asset to your business, and is well worth the investment. Go to any “two dollar” shop and you’ll know that the product that you buy will last for a short time, but in most cases is disposable.

  Just as in your business, you know that the lower the price, chances are the lower the quality. Are you prepared to sacrifice your rates and value of your expertise for the sake of a sale? Most business owners go down that path when they are struggling to find clients. So why would a good book-keeper be struggling to find clients? Average bookeepers are plentiful, and they consider the best way they can attract clients is by lowering their rates.

  Often you’ll find that bookkeepers that have lowered their rates will take longer to carry out thier work, and so you’ll be paying them the same overall for the service that a book keeper charging higher rates will have completed in less time.

  Remember this: the question that you really want the answer to is “How much will it save me to outsource my book-keeping?”

  ]]> http://www.yo2go.com/bookkeeping-rates-how-much-and-how-long/feed/ 1 http://www.yo2go.com/myob-bookkeeping-software-sales/ http://www.yo2go.com/myob-bookkeeping-software-sales/#comments Mon, 17 Aug 2009 04:39:18 +0000 beancounter http://www.yo2go.com/?p=505 When a client ordered some MYOB accounting software last week, it should have been a straightforward process.

  As MYOB professional partners we also act as retailers for MYOB, so that any clients needing some bookkeeping software can ask us to have the product delivered straight to their door. Hence the shipping address on the delivery docket.

  When the courier company received the package and delivery instructions, they dutifully arrived at the suite of offices in Broadbeach, but could not find any business in that building listed as Yo2go

  This is hardly surprising, since the address on the docket was that of our client, not the premises of our bookkeeping services. The courier company got back to base, then proceeded to make the necessary telephone calls to try and track down the correct delivery address.

  How hard can it to be deliver bookkeeping software to the correct address? Well, it transpires that the courier company were diligent in making the delivery, which has to be signed for – so they were looking for an authorised signature to match the company name on the delivery docket “Yo2go”

  When we contacted MYOB, they said that a “human error had been made” which was very unusual. So unusual indeed, since they had made the same error on previous occasions, and it is an error that is apparently “standard practice” at MYOB.

  You would want your bookkeepers to be accurate, efficient, and speedy, wouldn’t you? We strive to save our bookkeeping clients time and money, providing a high level of service.

  On this occasion, we were made out to be incompetent and unreliable because someone at MYOB decided that the contact name and company name to go with the shipping address were really unimportant.

  ]]> http://www.yo2go.com/myob-bookkeeping-software-sales/feed/ 0 http://www.yo2go.com/bookkeeping-means-good-record-keeping/ http://www.yo2go.com/bookkeeping-means-good-record-keeping/#comments Thu, 13 Aug 2009 05:53:37 +0000 beancounter http://www.yo2go.com/?p=500 Why does good book keeping mean good record keeping? Well. we’ve talked many times previously about the importance of good record keeping to save money on your bookkeeping fees.

  Recently a client approached us with an A4 archive box full of suppliers’ invoices, and a coupe of bank statements, for the 2008 – 2009 financial year.

  We were just given the box, and asked to record all the transactions – we had no idea of the nature of the business, no opening balances – nothing. We looked through the paperwork and proceeded to find a pattern of transactions.

  how good record keeping can save money on your bookkeeping fees

  We’ve many years experience as bookkeepers, and were able to work out how many of the payments were made, though it proved to be quite a challenge, owing to the way that the client has been keeping the paperwork, such as:

  • Incorrect cheque numbers were written on invoices
  • Statements marked “paid” with no amounts detailed
  • Cheques written with no payee
  • Invoice amounts altered by hand
  • Invoices marked “paid by Cash”
  • No record of cash income from sales
  • No record of what the cash deposits into the bank account represent
  • Bank statements missing
  • Cheque books missing
  • Deposit books missing

  A simple extra 30 seconds each time the client made a payment would have saved us a few minutes in trying to track down what the client had done. All those extra minutes turn into hours, and turn into increased fees for their book keeping

  ]]> http://www.yo2go.com/bookkeeping-means-good-record-keeping/feed/ 0 http://www.yo2go.com/what-tax-break-for-small-business/ http://www.yo2go.com/what-tax-break-for-small-business/#comments Mon, 27 Jul 2009 06:59:10 +0000 beancounter http://www.yo2go.com/?p=496 The Rudd Government is helping small businesses with the Small Business and General Business Tax Break. How does this help your small business?

  The package is such that small businesses can claim a bonus 50 per cent tax deduction for eligible assets costing more than $1,000 acquired from 13 December 2008 until 31 December 2009, and installed ready for use by 31 December 2010.

  To benefit from this Tax Break a small business must have a turnover of less than $2.0 million a year.

  Forget the tax break, shop at your locally owned store

  This may look good on paper, but unless you actually need to make any investment in capital purchases such as motor vehicles or equipment, how does it actually help small business?

  It certainly helps large businesses – the suppliers of motor vehicles, national stationary / office equipment suppliers, hardly normal electical chain stores and the like, but how does it help you, the small business owner in Broadbeach or Nerang?

  Speaking to an accountant of one of our bookkeeping clients recently, he said that whilst the incentive looks very rosy, you should actually look at the costs involved in the purchase of a new vehicle.

  The Rudd government is doing little to REALLY help small business

  Taking all things into consideration for this particular client, the client was going to be worse off purchasing a new vehicle compared to finding a cheaper second-hand vehicle

  Unless you want to buy some equipment, it seems that the Rudd government is doing little to REALLY help small business. It’s helped the Big Four Banks with it’s bank guarantee. It’s helped the Big Supermarkets by scrapping the consumer price-choice website so that it’s harder to see that consumers are being ripped off.

  The Australian Government and State Governments are helping the construction industry by announcing massive infrastructure packages – contracts that will be doubtless won by Big Construction Companies

  So what can the small business owner to benefit from the Rudd Government’s stimulus packages?

  Many small business owners are understandably looking to save money wherever they can, believing that’s the only way that they can increase their income.

  Yet at the sametime, they also want to increase their turnover by attracting more customers or upselling existing customers. Small business should support small-to-medium enterprise (SME), a concept that the Australian Federal Government seems to fail to comprehend.

  Why do small business owners have a problem with supporting other small-to-medium enterprises?

  Many small business owners support the Big Supermarkets by buying all their groceries to take advantage of the shopper dockets to get discount fuel.

  Instead of supporting small independent green-grocers or butchers, those same clients, rather than paying a few cents more (perhaps) for fuel from independent service station operators support the Big Service Station chains

  Those same small business owners are the first to complain that potential customers are going to the large companies or multi-nationals instead of shopping from them

  Maybe we should stop pointing the finger at other people, and start asking ourselves, why do small businesses have a problem trading with other small businesses?

  Do large companies really care about the local Oxenford, Coomera, Palm Beach or Currumbin business owner? Not when the head office is in Sydney, Melbourne or even overseas

  The positive effect on the local economy would be far wider reaching than all of those small business owners that continue to support large companies who are only interested in making huge profits for their shareholders (many of whom are large multi-nationals themselves).

  Go shopping at your local independantly owned business, take business away from large corporations and bring back competition to the market place – you’ll be helping the local econmy whch will in-turn help your own small business. It’s a short term cost for a long term gain.

  ]]> http://www.yo2go.com/what-tax-break-for-small-business/feed/ 0