Startups and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) need to manage their funds smartly to gear toward better profit and avoid negative cash flow. Good bookkeeping is a good way to ensure this. But with so many other duties and responsibilities to handle, bookkeeping services are best assigned to a bookkeeping assistant.
With a bookkeeping assistant to help you manage your bookkeeping services needs, you have accurate and up-to-date records of business transactions. All of which can be readily retrieved for financial reporting and evaluation purposes.
What is Bookkeeping?
Bookkeeping is the process of recording a business’ daily financial transactions into organized accounts. Traditional bookkeeping requires that a bookkeeper record transactions into accounting books while a virtual bookkeeper updates business records digitally. Collaboration tools have paved the way for virtual assistants to fulfill bookkeeping services for small businesses remotely.
A bookkeeping assistant does the following:
- data entry jobs
- accounts payable jobs
- payroll service for small businesses
- corporate payroll services
Duties and Responsibilities of a Bookkeeping Assistant
Your virtual bookkeeper is important since they can accurately maintain your business ledgers and track all of your business transactions. Here are some other duties and responsibilities that your virtual bookkeeper can do for your business:
1. Business Transaction Entries
Having a bookkeeping assistant dedicated to handling journal entries ensures precise financial reporting. What’s more, they do the accounts receivable job effectively to ensure that your accounts are closely monitored and can be endorsed to the collection department.
2. Financial Records
Accurate financial reports allow you to know your exact financial position. Plus, if you have the finances to fund your business plans. With a reliable virtual bookkeeper to help you update your books regularly, you will be able to know your business’s financial status to see whether your plans are benefitting your business or not.
3. Financial Statements
Financial statements show if your business is making profits or not. Hiring your own bookkeeping assistant helps you take care of creating the year-end financial statements including any bank reconciliation statement that needs to be done.
4. Invoicing and Prompt Payments
Bills and invoices have to be paid on time to avoid unnecessary surcharges and other fees. This also ensures any service subscriptions you rely on remain active. At the same time, receivables are important since they supply your startup or SME business with much-needed finances. Getting the services of a virtual bookkeeper allows you to take care of emailing or calling customers to remind them of their unpaid invoices.
If your startup or SME is a retailer, financial institution, or manufacturer, your VA can also handle credit control. While this is often taken up by the company’s risk management committee, your VA can also help them monitor it to minimize losses brought on by poor loans.
5. Tax Preparation and Management
Employing a bookkeeping assistant helps you take care of these including paying them quarterly or annually.
6. Payroll Management
Your virtual bookkeeper can administer payroll including their salaries, bonuses, incentives, deductions, and net pay.
Why hire a bookkeeping assistant from Magic?
You can expect your Magic virtual bookkeeper to be one of Magic’s vetted remote workers equipped to handle bookkeeping services. We’ve also carefully screened the candidates to provide you with the top candidates, whom we think are the most suitable for your requirements.
Lastly, we’re dedicated to making it easy for you to manage your team of virtual assistants with the use of the portal. So, your bookkeeping assistant can be entrusted to help manage your accounting books, especially in the following situations:
Your taxes are complex
- Having multiple clients and income streams combined with deductions and other factors plus the forms to file makes taxes a very complex task to do. When you’re feeling overwhelmed with what deductions to put in what income stream, free yourself from this confusion and headache by getting the services of a virtual bookkeeper. They’ll make sure that you’re updated with all your payroll, and tax declarations including deductions and filings.
Too much time spent on accounting
- Accounting requires careful and accurate records of daily business transactions. If you’re spending time on bookkeeping keeps you from fulfilling your other duties, then it’s a good idea to delegate to a bookkeeping assistant. Getting someone dedicated to bookkeeping services will keep your customers happy and foster growth prospects.
Your business is growing
- SME and startup owners may want to handle things at the start thinking that they can’t spare the money to pay for the services of a virtual bookkeeper. However, hiring one is advisable once you’re growing and expanding your business.
Contract a virtual bookkeeping assistant to update your records once a month and a certified public accountant (CPA) to manage your taxes. Later, you can scale up or down, depending on your needs.
All in all, Magic aims to make processes and collaboration easy for you and your virtual assistants – even the hiring process. Check out our hiring guide when you want a bookkeeping assistant from Magic. Get started with your bookkeeping services by calling us today!