When Should You Stop Doing Your Bookkeeping Yourself?

November 22, 2021

You have employees to manage, finances to monitor, and a business to grow. Not to mention everything else your life demands from you! 

If your bookkeeping is taking all of your time and you find yourself without the time or energy to enjoy running it, it’s time to hire a bookkeeper and stop doing the bookkeeping yourself.

Beyond the challenges of growing a small business, there are good reasons to hire a bookkeeper at various stages of business growth. From business plans and business start-ups to credit applications and tax audits, a bookkeeper can make your life easier with each of these steps. 

This does not mean that you have to employ a bookkeeper full-time or even hire them to stay on, but it may be time to ask yourself whether you should stop doing your own bookkeeping. 

If you spend all your time keeping numbers, preparing your taxes, revising records, and making mistakes along the way, your small business needs a bookkeeper. You rely on having an accurate picture of the finances of your company and your management in order to manage and grow your business. 

Basic small business accounting documents in a spreadsheet can be set up, but it is tedious, prone to manual errors, and time-consuming without comprehensive small business accounting software and a capable bookkeeper focusing their time on this critical task.

In the Beginning

In many cases, the starting point for an entrepreneur is simple: they carry out all their accounting themselves. In addition, the transaction volume per month is minimal, so that bookkeeping and accounting are not time-consuming tasks.

Then, your business starts to grow.

What an Amazing Time

Once your business gets off the ground and you begin growing steadily, it’s a great time for everyone. While there is more work to be done and often more stress, this means the world you’ve been doing is paying off. 

However, that growth means hiring more employees to manage tasks that you used to be able to do all by yourself. Let’s face it, there simply isn’t enough time. 

So When Should You Stop?

If you’ve found yourself working 50, 60, or 70+ hour weeks, worrying about the details of your business’s finances, it’s time to stop doing your bookkeeping yourself. Your business has grown to this point thanks to your vision and hard work, but you won’t have a chance to grow it further if your time is taken up with repetitive tasks. 

A bookkeeper handles the daily tasks of recording financial transactions, including purchases, receipts, sales, and payments, so you don’t have to. 

If you want to keep growing your business without the time constraints placed on your by your bookkeeping, hire an expert and stop doing your bookkeeping yourself.