Since technology took over every aspect of life, it has also affected businesses positively. When performing a simple task requires a lot of time, such as keeping an updated accounting journal. But gone are the days when traditional accounting was a significant part of every big and small organization. Now keeping in mind that accounting is the backbone of every business entity, you must ensure that your firm must adopt the new ways of accounting. Despite nature or size, most businesses are shifting towards virtual accounting systems, as they have become more convenient, fast, and reliable. So even if you own a small enterprise, make sure it is working according to the modern accounting standards.
Before you know how virtual accounting firms can benefit you and your work, it is vital to understand what virtual accounting services are.
Virtual Accounting Service
Virtual accounting service is the bookkeeping and accounting service that can be utilized through the internet. You hire an accounting firm from the outside to help you maintain your day-to-day accounting transactions and activities. Everything is done through an online accounting program, from payroll to managing accounts payable and from accumulation depreciation to keeping misc records. Virtual accounting service is developed to do all the routine accounting and bookkeeping functions performed in traditional ways.
Of course, those ways are becoming history now, as manual work can be full of errors and time-consuming. So the goal of hiring a virtual accounting team is to make your business highly efficient and effective.
Benefits of Virtual Accounting Services
There are numerous advantages of virtual accounting services, such as:
1. Increased Productivity, Decreased Paperwork
Undoubtedly, accounting is all about recording transactions, but many companies don’t realize that using sheets, papers, and registers to do this job only makes things worse. Why? Because it occupies not only your office shelves but also corrections or updates turn out to be quite difficult.
Moreover, whenever there is something new to add to any previous accounts, your in-house accountant uses a new paper to save the record. This activity is the reason why the tables are always messy and full of paper piles. This takes away the required focus, and your business loses its prolificacy.
Another drawback of paperwork is that the record is vulnerable. Even a coffee spill can erase an important accounting record.
But on the contrary, a virtual accounting service uses software to maintain the record. The team is also responsible for saving the record and timely updates.
So as a consequence, your office becomes clean, and your workforce becomes productive. You think less about the mess and more about growing your business.
2. 24/7 Accessibility
As a businessman, you must overview your financial reports and statements at any hour. Auditing your record while in the office can be simple, but what if you are out of the premises? Suppose you are having a cup of coffee with a client, and suddenly, you need to go through your business’s financial reports. Do you think leaving a client there just to get the paperwork will make you look like a professional? Not at all.
But everything becomes so handy when your business is backed by virtual accountants. You can access your accounts, go through your accounting files, and even check for online taxes anytime and anywhere without thinking about the date or time.
Virtual accounting services provide a user-friendly portal that is accessible round the clock.
3. Need-Based Hiring
Salary expenses are the greatest expenditures in your business. You cannot deny paying the salary to your in-house accountant even if there is not much work to do. Conversely, there could be times when the workload is high, and you feel like adding a few more members to your accounts department.
The newly hired staff might help you solve your accounting problems, but they could become a liability in the long run. The scenario changes when you opt for virtual accounting services, as they can be hired whenever you are required.
For instance, you can hire virtual accountants to calculate the entire taxable amount and pay them on time when you want to pay your online corporate taxes.
So if your bookkeeping and accounting needs are mostly low, then going for a part-time virtual bookkeeping service is the best thing to reduce your cost.
4. Accounting Accuracy
Having accurate numbers in your business transactions can help you make quick and result-oriented decisions. On the other hand, incorrect bookkeeping hides your current financial position, which can cause great loss at the end of the day.
For example, deciding whether to invest in a specific commodity or back out from it depends on your business’s net income, short-term and long-term liabilities, securities, and several other heads of accounts. So any faulty figures in your accounting journal can terribly damage your business.
This is one of the reasons why companies now prefer virtual accounting services because they include experienced accountants. Through their high qualification in virtual accounting, they offer financial reporting with updated and accurate account balances.
Furthermore, the good part is that the record is accessible in real-time. You don’t have to wait for hours to see the latest version of your financial report.
5. Technological Support
Ever thought about why most small businesses are now pursuing technology to complete their day-to-day tasks? If they don’t take such steps, they will soon be out of the market.
The customers need a quick response, and they don’t like waiting in long queues to get a single receipt.
That’s why even the local corner shops have been using the latest accounting software, as it keeps the information at their fingertips. Within a few seconds, they have all the accounting record in front of their eyes.
So knowing what’s left in the inventory, the number of sales you made in a day, discounts you have given, or the taxable amount for any product or service through using new technology is only possible when you have virtual accountants. Virtual accounting firm can handle everything, and you work effortlessly.
6. Easy Tax Management
There are different taxes necessary to pay by the small business owners. But it is impossible to play every single role on your own. Therefore, you count on your in-house accountants for tax calculations, but things eventually go wrong.
Paying online small business taxes appears to be a simple job, but this is where most start-ups and SMEs go through a series of troubles. Tax calculation needs an eye of an expert, and unfortunately, small businesses don’t have highly-skilled accountants to compute the exact amount of taxes.
Also, their incompetency increases the risk of untimely tax payments, which results in heavy penalties and loss of business credibility.
So to make sure your business is always out of tax issues and legal problems, virtual accounting services are always ready to manage taxation by calculating the correct tax amount required to be paid.
7. Easy Reconciliation
Whether it’s about reconciling a bank statement or a credit card, the process always seems tiring and full of confusion. So your virtual accounting team takes this job and enters all the transactions and data from your credit card and bank accounts into the accounting software. Once the data is entered, the virtual accounting service takes the reconciliation responsibility and delivers your credit and cash position monthly statements.
8. Invoicing Customers
Small and medium-sized businesses often make mistakes when it comes to invoicing customers. The limited staff and expertise in accounting create a lot of disorder in the invoicing procedure, which sometimes results in losing a valuable customer.
Virtual accounting services can take care of invoices, and some of them even make recovery calls on behalf of your business.
9. Timely Bill Payments
Every week or month, your in-house accountant is liable to manage all the bills. He or she arranges them by their due dates and sends the final report to you to keep you informed about the payable amounts.
It is expert vs. novice. Virtual accounting service is more trustworthy and does an error-free evaluation of the accounts payable. This helps in maintaining the trust level among your vendors and customers.
10. Complete Monitoring
Last but not least, when you hire a virtual accounting service, your business is monitored by a project manager. The individual is responsible for keeping track and monitoring all your transactions to ensure everything goes smoothly. Furthermore, the entire team is there to help resolve any issues in the minimum time.
Bottom Line
Bookkeeping is surely a stressful occupation, and it calls for accounting specialists to make sure that not even a single transaction is missed. Hiring a virtual accounting team for a small business is a perfect choice rather than depending on a single in-house accountant. Virtual accounts are professionals in their field, and they know how to tackle even the most challenging accounting tasks.