Bookkeepers and Mobile Bookkeeping Services

The first answer many potential bookkeeping clients want when contacting a Gold Coast bookkeeping service is about the rates that a bookkeeper may charge.

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.