An account does far more than handling small business accounting and filing a business’s annual taxes. When hiring an accountant, small business owners should seek out those capable of using their talents and technology to help manage cash flow and reach the company’s goals.
Whatever goals a small business has, hiring an accounting professional can help put the business on the right track and help move forward, getting closer to the goal each day.
Hiring a large team of accounting and finance professionals is not something many small business owners can afford. Instead, they must look into how their accountant or finance expert can help them with many other aspects of the business operation.
Hiring the perfect accounting professional can take some work off the owner’s to-do list, freeing up valuable time to make more money.
Below are some ways small business accounting professionals can help business owners:
Manage Payroll
Small business owners quickly realize that managing payroll is more than calculating wages based on an employee’s hours and issuing paychecks. Payroll involves:
- Working with various federal, state, and local laws
- Filing payroll tax returns
- Dealing with withholding rates
- And much more
When hiring an accounting professional, business owners can stop worrying about understanding and implementing reporting requirements and following payroll laws.
A small business accounting professional handles all the payroll and tax business, providing accurate payroll data that can be used to track the company’s progress and provide proactive advice on how to save money and increase profits based on the business’s payroll trends.
Create Actionable Insights
Small businesses have more data available than most owners realize, including inventory counts, marketing results, employee timesheets, and tracking customer purchases. An accounting professional can turn this data using an analytics tool to uncover valuable insights into a business’s operation. The information gathered can help:
- Improve cash flow management
- Identify places where the process can be improved for increased efficiency
- Watch for client and customer behavioral patterns
- Determine if there is a need to hire more employees or lay them off
- Create compensation packages based on employee performance and local job market demand
Discover Funding Opportunities
Small businesses have many opportunities to receive financial assistance, tax breaks, loans, and grants. An accounting professional can help find funding opportunities that can help a business increase money flow and save money.
In addition, should a business need money, an accountant understands the business and industry and can provide value to the company making it possible to get approved for certain loans and grants.
The accountant can also identify any unnecessary spending to help reduce the cash flow out of business.
Alleviate Stress
Hiring an accountant to handle the business’s financial aspects frees up a business owner’s time to do what they do best – focus on running a business. Let the professional handle the finances, data collecting, researching money-making avenues, and provide advice on making the company more efficient and profitable.
No matter how much a business owner may think they know how to take care of the business’s books, there is always something that gets overlooked or missed because they are not a financial expert who knows the ins and outs of the finance world.
Prioritize tasks and leave everything possible in the hands of the accounting professional, which will free up a tremendous amount of time.
Find Tax Credits and Benefits
In addition to filing a business’s taxes, an accounting professional can help identify and find tax credits and benefits. Additionally, the accountant can help reduce a business owner’s tax liability, which reduces the total amount of taxes owed.
Millions of tax credits go unclaimed annually and having an experienced and knowledgeable professional handling the accounting for a business is key to finding and taking advantage of these credits, savings, and benefits.
Compare Progress to Competing Businesses
An accountant can help compare a business to other local and competing businesses to determine if prices are comparable enough, what services different companies offer, and how to keep a business competitive for salaries, benefits, and managing expenses. In addition, an accounting professional understands where to look for industry numbers and how to compare them to current business numbers and stats.
Improve Problem-Solving
As any business owner knows, businesses face many challenges, and anything can go wrong. However, sometimes potential crises can be identified by monitoring business stats, trends, salaries, and trends. When potential problems can be identified early, there is a greater chance of solving them before they become a significant problem.
Having an accounting professional handle all the books for a small business can benefit the business owner. For most, hiring an accountant frees up time for business owners to focus on other projects is the most significant benefit. Extra time is key to a successful business, so it is best to let the accountant worry about all the financial work and data analysis.