Where Can I Find Reputable Bookkeepers for Hire Near Me?
You have lots of options when you are looking to hire a bookkeeper for your small business.
You can hop on Fiverr or another gig economy type site to find something cheap.
You can ask your CPA if they can do it for you.
Or you can find a dedicated full-charge bookkeeper that actively works to make your life easier.
But finding a reputable bookkeeper that helps your business function effectively and efficiently is easier said than done.
There is a lot of noise out there in the small business space and often referrals and recommendations end up being the thing that helps you find a reputable bookkeeper near you.
With that being said, I have listed several ways to make sure that the person you hire is reputable so you can pinpoint the red flags and go in with a realistic mindset of what to expect, or ask, when hiring a new bookkeeper.
TLDR
Understand where not to look first. Avoid overloading your CPA with bookkeeping work and instead look for a dedicated full-charge bookkeeping company.
A reliable bookkeeper is a full-charge bookkeeper that takes responsibility for all the books and communicates consistently and clearly on a regular basis.
Hopefully your bookkeeper is also a QuickBooks Pro Advisor so that you have the advantage of having someone who knows the software as much as they know bookkeeping.
Be aware of bookkeeper red flags: overuse of AI, location generalizations, ownership issues, irregular schedules.
Vet several bookkeepers using the information in this article and try to have a conversation over the phone or video call to make sure that they know what they are talking about.
Ask for a review and assessment of your books first (usually for a fee) to get a feel of what they can do and how detailed their work is before you sign up for a full clean-up project.
Where Not To Look
When searching for a reliable bookkeeping service, the best way to whittle down your options is to know where not to look.
First things first, don’t go to your CPA.
I know that they are the most reputable and know all the things for taxes, but their main job is taxes…not bookkeeping.
Your CPA is an essential part of your small business financial team, but shouldn’t necessarily be the one and only person taking everything apart and putting it back together.
Many CPAs won’t even do the bookkeeping at all. Others might offer a steep price to have them do it at their hourly CPA rate. You might even find some CPA firms advertising bookkeeping services, but they will most likely outsource either to a third party or an inhouse bookkeeper..but keep those higher CPA rates in tact.
Let your CPA do what they really went into business to do and let them focus on all the things that go into submitting your tax return appropriately. A dedicated bookkeeping company can set up the books so that the CPA can easily do their job well.
How to Know if Your Bookkeeper is Reliable
A reliable bookkeeper for small businesses should be helping with more than categorizing expenses.
Instead of transaction based bookkeeping, a reliable bookkeeper is helping you with anything from inventory management, to sales tax submissions, to running payroll, to invoicing customers.
You deserve to have someone who knows your business and is dedicated to making sure that it works as a holistic system rather than to click the buttons and call it a day.
A reliable bookkeeper is one who takes responsibility for the books in their entirety.
That means that you want someone who indicates that they are a full-charge bookkeeper.
Read more about what a full-charge bookkeeper is in my article here.
If you are considering hiring a bookkeeper, ask them directly if they offer full-charge bookkeeping. If they don’t, or worse they don’t know what this is, consider other options.
You can hire them, but they probably won’t be doing all the things that you need them to do in order for your business to continue running smoothly on the financial side of things. This type of bookkeeper likely only knows how to work in one aspect of bookkeeping whereas a full-charge bookkeeper covers all aspects of small business bookkeeping.
A reliable bookkeeper is one who communicates.
A good bookkeeper should speak with their clients regularly and be responsive to any questions. This includes things like monthly reports, emails to ask clarification questions, transparency about what is going on behind the scenes, alerts of potential fraud, etc.
If a bookkeeper is not communicating well, especially before you hire them, this is a problem. No matter how good they are with numbers, communication issues will always make things worse for you and your business.
Note: This does not mean that a bookkeeper should be available 24/7 for you. Clear and consistent communication can still happen during business hours and within contract parameters.
A reliable bookkeeper works on a regular schedule.
It is not enough to review a client’s books once a quarter. A bookkeeper who is only looking at your small business finances once a quarter or semi-annually, or worse once a year, will not be able to find all the nitty gritty details that they need to.
It is best to look for someone who offers monthly packages and will be looking through your finances on a regular basis. This way, you know that you can look at your P&L or balance sheet or other financial reports on a regular basis to make strategic changes to your small business as they come up.
Read more about the difference between per-transaction pricing and monthly package pricing.
Bookkeeper Red Flags
Let’s look into some of the big red flags that can come up when trying to find a reliable bookkeeper.
AI Usage:
All bookkeepers and bookkeeping software, like QuickBooks, use some amount of AI at this point. But, any firm that advertises itself as being powered by AI should be viewed with a bit of skepticism.
AI is a rapidly changing technology, but there are certain things it will just never do.
For example, the phrase ”automated reconciliations” is a big red flag that someone is being dishonest OR simply doesn’t understand what they are talking about in respect to bookkeeping.
This is because reconciliation is largely a process of trying to figure out where the automations went wrong. You can’t automate the fixing of failed automations.
I had a client that tried to save money by hiring a bookkeeper online from Fiverr. The bookkeeper claimed that they would use AI to automatically do the past 5 YEARS of bookkeeping at a super low cost.
It turns out the AI they were using automatically read all the bank statements provided by the client and uploaded them into an Excel spreadsheet. (Also, a horrible thing for your business financials to be uploaded to an unverified AI that won’t protect your data).
The AI looked for keywords to sort expenses automatically and uploaded them to pre-labeled cells. The spreadsheet then used a number of pre-written formulas to calculate totals and produce a report.
The result was something that the client themselves later described as “useless.” The CPA was not able to use the spreadsheet for taxes, and I couldn’t even use the spreadsheet during the cleanup so everything had to begin from scratch.
Read more here about the Dangers of AI in Bookkeeping.
Ownership Issues:
If a bookkeeper does not give you access to your own books, that is a big red flag.
Company owners should always have access to their own books.
Sometimes a bookkeeper might offer to set everything up for you, YAY! But then they make the login information all theirs and you don’t know what is going on inside the system.
Always make sure that everything is set up in your name with your business email address and then add the bookkeeper as an Accountant on your profile. Anyone that is a QuickBooks Pro Advisor, like myself, should be able to access all their clients from their own login.
You don’t want your potential bookkeeper holding your books hostage and demanding payment for it. This separation keeps your books safe and secure and in your hands.
Location Specific:
Consider using a bookkeeper who works specifically in your state.
Hearing “I can work with any state or country” is a huge red flag.
Bookkeeping isn’t a licensed profession, so technically a bookkeeper can practice anywhere and everywhere.
But every state has different laws and regulations. Just because a bookkeeper has experience in one state, doesn’t mean they know all the nuances of a business in another state. If a potential bookkeeper says that they can work with any state regulation, ask some extra questions about how they keep up with all those regulations for each state.
My agency, Column & Post LLC, specializes in providing bookkeeping for small businesses in Orlando and across all of Florida.
The person does not have to live in the state they specialize in, but they should have some sort of specialization versus a broad generalization. Your books will be far more thorough with someone who knows your state rules.
Finding the Right Bookkeeper for Small Businesses
You can find the right bookkeeper for you and your business by looking for a full-charge bookkeeper who specializes in your state.
Avoid using an administrative assistant that doesn’t have a background in bookkeeping or you might end up with serious errors, to no fault of their own, and a big cleanup project before tax season.
Look for those that have been a dedicated bookkeeper for a number of years (usually LinkedIn can help verify this) and always speak with them over the phone or video call before sending over any funds.
I recommend finding 2 or 3 bookkeepers, talk with each to ask about the information in this article, and then make your choice to move forward.
Starting with a Review & Assessment of your current bookkeeping, like I offer, also creates a lower risk for you while seeing how they work and their dedication to understanding your business.
Starting Your Search
Finding a reliable bookkeeper near you will unfortunately need a bit more vetting than a Google Search or ChatGPT inquiry.
I hope that you can use the above information to ask specific questions of the person you choose to hire and find someone who really understands your business, your needs as a business owner, and brings transparent communication to their full-charge bookkeeping practices.
Schedule a Free Consultation with me to hear more about my full-charge bookkeeping services or even chat about what support you need in your small business.