Owning your own business is an exciting path in life. But most people journey down that path because they are interested in providing a great product or service to the market, not because they want to do lots and lots of paperwork.
Of course, in the early years of your business, an entrepreneur like you has no choice but to handle administrative tasks in-house. It’s not only cheaper, it’s more effective in the long run because it teaches you what records need to be kept, and why they need to be kept.
Once those important lessons are learned and the business begins to grow, though, it is often a good move to farm those tasks out to someone who can do it full-time. And the sooner this can be done, the better!
There is a lot at stake in your bookkeeping. You probably learned that during the time you were forced to do it yourself. So when your budget allows it, make an early move to get outside help with your administrative duties. Here are several key reasons why.
The Ability To Gather Extra Information
When you were doing your own books, what was the first thing you did after you finished? More than likely, you answered, “Something I like.” Getting bogged down in the minutiae of your administrative work keeps you from doing the things you got into business to do, whether it’s restoring a classic car or developing a new app. The point is that as soon as you can get loose from administrative work each day, you do it.
For associates at Kansas City CPA firm MarksNelson, administrative work is the something they like. As a result, they not only take care of the required tasks for their clients, they also go above and beyond by assembling reports on costs, revenues, hours worked by employees, and countless other metrics that can give you powerful insights on the inner workings of your business.
Laws Are Always Changing
It’s true that the only certain things in life are death and taxes, but there’s no certainty in how either one arrives. The tax code seems to change hourly, and if you aren’t engrossed in staying current on it, the system will leave you in its dust.
Is it too difficult for you to understand? Probably not. But you have other things to do than to spend hours and hours keeping track of the latest bracket changes or allowable expenses. Your best investment of time is in the production of your goods or services, so it makes sense to let your outside administrator take care of keeping you compliant with the government.
And speaking of laws, your books aren’t the only interaction you’ll have with government regulations. Any type of contracts, real estate transactions, or personnel issues will require input from a qualified attorney. Unless you’re big enough to have a staff attorney, you’ll want to keep one among your outside staff.
Your Schedule Gains Freedom
You’ve been working for weeks to develop a new product. You are so close to a breakthrough on the last little complications when it hits you–it’s time to run payroll.
So you interrupt the natural flow of your ideas, the process of managing your creativity, and go slave over printing and signing checks for a couple of hours. Then you go back and try to reconnect, but the momentum is gone.
Ideas are mysterious things. They can be brilliant but so fragile. If you don’t get them on paper or in action immediately, they’re gone.
And creativity is not the only risk here. Clients drop by wanting to check in on their orders. Investors want to talk about expanding your market. And you’ve got to excuse yourself for a task that you hate doing in the first place.
Balancing the demands for your time and skills is a tricky undertaking. Knowing what you should do yourself and what you should pay someone else to do can be a real challenge. But when you can find the funds to farm out specialized administrative tasks, take the opportunity and do it.