Signs that Your Business Needs an Accountant

Losing track of your business finances? Here’s what to watch out for.

It’s natural to feel confident in your business skills and believe that you can handle the basics of running a company. However, when it comes time to crunch numbers, some entrepreneurs discover they don’t have the time or mathematical prowess to do all the calculating themselves. If that describes your situation, it might be a sign that you need to hire an accountant.

Importance of a good accountant

Most entrepreneurs have little or no training in accounting—and you’ll find that the more complex your business becomes, the more important financial basics like tracking expenses and income will be to its success.

When you consider all these issues, here are four signs that your small business needs an accountant like Omer & Company:

Cashflow is king

You don’t know how much money is coming in vs. going out every month. You run a business with a fixed or variable overhead, meaning the cost of providing goods and services such as rent and payroll is the same every month, but your actual income fluctuates each month depending on sales. You might not be tracking the income-expense ratio (the amount of money you’re spending on producing goods vs. selling them), and you might not know whether you’re moving toward profitability.

You refer to your accountant as “my lawyer” or “my financial advisor.”

You don’t know how to properly report transactions. You’re afraid to file your tax return, or you regularly get requests from the HMRC to explain entries on your income tax statements. You don’t know the difference between a business credit card and a personal one and whether you can deduct business expenses on it.

You have more employees than you can handle.

You have employees who knowingly commit fraud and theft of company funds—but now that it’s clear they’re stealing from you, you don’t know what to do about it.

Your business is growing, but you don’t understand how.

The look of joy and satisfaction on your face when you talk about your business’s growth tells the truth. You see it, but you cannot explain what it means—and why investing in a bookkeeper or accountant is essential to maintaining your growth.

Accounting is time-consuming for the owner of an entrepreneurial firm.

It is also important to note that, while accounting is time-consuming and may seem tedious to some, it can be fun, even exciting. In fact, people usually enjoy the challenge of working with numbers and hope and often believe that they have the right skills to run a company professionally. It is a good idea to check yourself through these signs above before you rush into hiring someone to bookkeeping for you.

As you can see, there are several reasons why hiring a bookkeeper or an accountant is important for your business. If you feel that your business is becoming complex and you are finding it difficult to control it, you may need to hire someone who can help handle these activities for you. It may be that some of these signs relate to your business, and it may be time to seek out some professional help.