Many business owners handle the books themselves when the company is small. That can work perfectly well for a while. The problem is that bookkeeping workload tends to grow quietly as the business adds customers, transactions, accounts, payroll, employees and complexity.

Eventually the question changes from “Can I still do this?” to “Should I still be doing this?”

1. Your Books Keep Falling Behind

If reconciliations are routinely postponed, transactions pile up or bookkeeping gets pushed to nights and weekends, the system is already telling you something.

Falling behind occasionally is normal. Falling behind every month means the business probably needs a more sustainable bookkeeping process.

2. Your Time Is Worth More Somewhere Else

An owner can be perfectly capable of doing the books and still be the wrong person to do them.

If an hour spent selling, managing employees, serving customers or running operations creates more value than an hour spent categorizing transactions and reconciling accounts, outsourcing can make sense even before the bookkeeping becomes overwhelming.

3. You Don’t Trust Your Financial Reports

Bookkeeping is not just a tax-time obligation. Your financial reports should help you understand what is happening in the business.

If you hesitate before trusting the profit-and-loss statement, cannot explain account balances or routinely wait for your CPA to tell you whether the books are right, the bookkeeping process needs attention.

4. Your CPA Has to Fix Too Much at Year-End

A tax professional should not have to reconstruct a year’s worth of routine bookkeeping before being able to prepare the return. Repeated year-end corrections can be a sign that the monthly bookkeeping process is not doing its job.

A professional bookkeeper can keep the records reconciled and organized throughout the year so cleaner information is available when your CPA needs it.

5. The Business Has Become More Complicated

Growth creates bookkeeping work. More transactions, bank accounts, credit cards, employees, payroll, loans, locations or projects can turn a simple bookkeeping system into a substantial monthly responsibility.

Some industries add their own complexity. Contractors may need job costing, subcontractor tracking, progress billing and labor allocation. Nonprofits may need grant, restricted-fund and program-expense tracking.

At that point, bookkeeping becomes less about entering transactions and more about maintaining a financial system the business can actually use.

6. You’re Thinking About Hiring a Bookkeeper

This is the perfect time to compare outsourcing with an employee before creating another position.

Many small businesses need professional bookkeeping every month but do not have 40 hours of bookkeeping work every week. An employee is paid for the workday and also brings employer payroll taxes, benefits where applicable, paid time off, recruiting, training and turnover costs.

Outsourcing allows the business to buy the bookkeeping support it actually needs. See our detailed comparison of an outsourced bookkeeper vs. an in-house bookkeeper.

7. One Employee Has Too Much Control Over the Books

Sometimes the issue is not workload but risk. A small company may rely heavily on one employee to maintain its financial records with little backup or oversight.

Outsourcing does not have to mean giving up a personal relationship. Capacity clients have a dedicated bookkeeper they know and work with directly, while that bookkeeper is backed by an established professional company with processes, organizational oversight and insurance.

8. You’re Avoiding Getting Help Because the Books Are a Mess

You do not need perfect books before outsourcing them. If records are months behind or inaccurate, cleanup can be the first step.

Capacity provides bookkeeping cleanup and catch-up services to bring existing records current before establishing an ongoing monthly process.

How Much Does Outsourced Bookkeeping Cost?

There is no useful average because the amount of work varies dramatically among businesses. Transaction volume is one of the biggest drivers, along with the number of accounts and the complexity of the bookkeeping.

A small company with a handful of monthly transactions should not need to pay a fee designed for a company processing thousands. Capacity quotes ongoing bookkeeping as a fixed monthly fee based on the work the business actually requires.

For more detail, see How Much Do Bookkeeping Services Cost for a Small Business?