Need bookkeeping for a business? But afraid of what to ask.
Why hesitate when you are the one who is going to invest and avail of the services?
While hiring an online bookkeeping service many business owners make mistakes and skip the important questions to ask. This is because many owners don’t the difference in online and offline bookkeeping. So we have curated 5 important questions that you must ask your virtual bookkeeper.
5 questions you should ask about virtual bookkeeping services:
1.Can you please tell me about your certifications?
While hiring an online bookkeeping service many business owners make mistakes and skip the important questions to ask. This is because many owners don’t the difference in online and offline bookkeeping. So we have curated 5 important questions that you must ask your virtual bookkeeper.
Always ask for certifications.
For instance certifications like:
Qualified Intuit Pro-Advisors, Certified Intuit Point of Sale Pro-Advisor, Xero Certified, Wave Certified, FreeBooks Certified Accountant
If he/she is a freelance bookkeeper you must enquire about the university he/she has qualified from, and in case you are looking forward to hiring a full-fledged bookkeeping firm there is nothing wrong in ensuring the number of certified professionals the firm holds; also about the kind of certifications the experts have.
2.For how long have you been in the industry?
Years of experience matter!
Wouldn’t you want to know how experienced is your virtual bookkeeper?
Ask them about the number of years they have been operating in the market; what kind of customers they deal with; what kind of clients have they majorly worked with; what their strengths are with the same track try finding out where and why they lie weak.
If they have experience in accounting software, then what is their experience with each software?
The more you ask questions, the more you tend to get a clear idea about their profile and experience.
3.Ask about costing
Always better to know the cost to outsource bookkeeping.
Here you should be asking questions that are a bit more cost related to your niche business.
Ask whether they do monthly contracts and recurring monthly charges or if are they inclined towards signing a long-term contract.
During this discussion, you can also try getting further clarification on the rates they charge.
We know that nobody would miss out on asking about the money matter but many times people falter at digging deeper into it. You must ask them whether they charge hourly, monthly, or as per volume of work; what if they are unable to meet deadlines; how do they compensate for the same?
You can also ask them to cite a few examples of such situations.
4.Data safety
As business owners, data security is vital.
You will always want that your data is kept confidential and promptly retrievable as and when you want.
For this purpose, you must ask questions about the security software they have equipped within their organization; what kind of security measures they take, what software’s they use, are that software dependable enough, and what is the level of security they offer to ensure data security, who all can access them, etc.
5.How do you communicate?
Communication should be seamless.
It has often been observed that after hiring the virtual bookkeeper, the entrepreneur faces a lot of issues just because of inappropriate communication.
It is seen that the service provider is not able to explain things or delays in emails, etc and it can create problems.
Hence, in order to avoid such a scenario you should never forget to asl the mode of communication and even the communication language is important.
Conclusion
Often many business owners hesitated or were unsure to ask these questions. But as these are relevant this must be asked prior to hiring.
