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How to Choose an Accountant for Your Business

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    An accountant is needed to correctly reflect expenses, receipts, write-offs, apply tax legislation to them and draw up the amount of tax that must be paid. 

    If you’re ready to hire an accountant, the next step is to choose which type of accountant to hire.

    It’s essential to take some time to do this carefully. You'll need to think about problems like the accountant's location, the division of workload, and the type of accounting software you'll use. Consider how much you'll have to pay the accountant and whether they can help to reduce your business taxes.

    Entrepreneurs often hire a staff accountant for work that one of the employees can do on their own, quickly and for free. At the same time, an accountant can really fulfill duties. They receive a salary every month but do accounting work several times a year.

    Online accounting

    Online services, when you do everything yourself: you calculate your salary, prepare personnel reporting. Then you pay little money for it. A significant drawback is that you also lose a few working hours.

    Such services are suitable for small businesses that have just launched and want to save money by channeling them into product development.

    Remote accounting 

    A remote accountant is a specialist who works for half a day. It happens that an entrepreneur himself goes to him and brings the documents that have accumulated. This is, in fact, outsourcing in different forms.

    Registration of employees takes place depending on the situation. Someone concludes a contract - that's right. Someone does not conclude, because: “Why are we going to fill out the documents once again, the same taxes have to be paid, I’ll just pay from hand to hand, especially since I know this person”. This situation is as dangerous as making a fire in the steppe.

    A remote accountant can be a risky option because a person who works alone has a limit. Sometimes an accountant gains clients for themselves, but in the end, they pay attention to someone according to the residual principle. Another specialist can go on maternity leave or get sick.

    A remote accountant is a good option for entrepreneurs who do not want to spend time on solving accounting issues but are not yet ready to hire an employee.

    Outsourced accounting services

    An outsourcing company usually employs eight to ten people and has about 30-40 clients. An accountant can manage five or six clients normally, with high quality. Out of these 40 clients, five clients actually bring them revenue and profit. Those who really make a profit are given more attention than others.

    A big plus in such small outsourcing companies is flexibility: they are ready to adapt to the client's tasks, but the human factor still remains.

    It is also important to understand that when you turn to outsourced accounting, you do not completely shift the responsibility to it. You need to be ready for partnership: for example, if documents from suppliers come to your office, then after that they need to be handed over to the accountant in time.

    Staff Accountant

    A full-time accountant can do everything, for example, do accounting work directly, go to the post office, send and receive correspondence, be a clerk, and hold an entrepreneur's hand when he panics. It is ideal for a complex business.

    It, as a rule, implies a large number of different scenarios, and here you need a person who will deeply dive into the processes. The disadvantage is the same - the human factor. And an ethical question arises: if you do not want employees to know how much their colleagues are earning, do not hire an accountant on the staff.