How investing in temporary or permanent financial support in your business can give you peace of mind, time and money back
This reason I wanted to write this blog is to illustrate and not just tell you about the impact that professional business services like us can have on small and medium sized businesses. If you are actively considering outsourcing some of your business support functions either on a long term or temporary basis, it can feel like you are just spending more of your hard earned money. However, what can that support provide your business with? Well in our experience, it can certainly provide you with;
- Peace of mind (extremely important for any business owner)
- Time back (to put into other areas of the business and generate more income)
- Money (from getting your accounts right and being able to make good business decisions)
To illustrate this, I wanted to give you an example of a business we worked with where we managed to achieve all of these things.
Just to give you a bit of background, this was a fast growing Hertfordshire based business using Xero accounting software. A previous bookkeeper had undertaken fraudulent activity and stolen from the business and left the business leaving the new Finance Director handling all financial elements and problem solving historical issues.
We were fortunate to be contacted by this company and we started working with them to help them in 2 ways.
The first way we helped them was by starting a recruitment process to employ a full-time bookkeeper. You may think that slightly unusual as a bookkeeping practice to be doing this for a client but it made complete sense. They needed a full-time employee in their business and they wanted our expertise in bookkeeping and recruitment of bookkeepers to help to recruit and select the right person to fit their business. So we advertised and searched for suitable applicants, telephone interviewed potential candidates and then presented the suitable applications to the management team. We then interviewed and tested all applicants with them and supported the decision making process.
We provided Xero training and support for the newly appointed bookkeeper.
Their full-time employee has now been working with them for nearly a year and is doing a great job for them and is a great fit for the business.
The second way we helped this business was by reviewing their Xero accounts and doing lots of remedial work to get these into the good order so that when the new employee joined he would be starting from accounts that were in good shape. This involved working closely with the Finance Director on this and a strong set of up to date accounts were the result. As part of this, an error on a previous VAT submissions resulted in a £60k refund being able to be sought from the HMRC.
So working with this particular client was a good example of where we were able to;
- Provide peace of mind for the management team. They now have a team structure in place where they have a dedicated and employed bookkeeper, an outsourced company (which is us) as a Xero specialist who they can call upon as needed and their accountant. This gives peace of mind that the accounts are being done correctly and effectively and minimises the risk of any inappropriate activity in their business. They also can rely on strong financial information to help them make the right decisions for the business.
- Time back – we provided time back to members of the management team by carrying out the recruitment processes for them and providing bookkeeping services to get their accounts accurate and up to date
- Money – we provided a cost effective recruitment service (lower than normal agency fees) and by providing effective accounting we saved them a rather large figure on their VAT.
So if you are thinking about getting professional support into your business, whether it be financial or other types of support, it really can be a very sensible financial investment which can reap significant rewards in the short and long term.
If any of this is resonating with you then please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us for an informal chat. There is no cost of having a coffee and finding out what your options for how we can enhance the finances in your business.
Please contact lynne@thebookkeepingdepartment.co.uk or Tel: 01462 455455. www.thebookkeepingdepartment.co.uk