Why bother with a bookkeeper?

February 4, 2015
5 minutes read

If you’re a brand new small business owner, you’ve probably wondered about the value of bringing on professional accounting or bookkeeping services. Here are some thoughts from the team at Madan Chartered Accountants:

1. Budgeting

One of the main jobs of a financial professional is creating a budget for your company. A budget is a forecast of a company’s expenditures and revenues over a time period in the future (e.g., 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, etc.)

It’s important for business owners to prepare budgets periodically in order to:

1) Better manage cash-flow

2) Plan for any short-falls in cash (e.g. through bank financing)

3) Help allocate company resources

4) Set goals for revenue and profit

In addition to preparing a budget, you as a business owner, should review your company’s actual results against the budget to see if financial goals have been achieved and if there is room for improvement.

2. Review company financial statements

It’s important to review the financial performance (i.e. profitability) of your business at least quarterly with your bookkeeper so that you can:

1) Quantify the business’ profits or losses.

2) Identify areas for improvement in sales.

3) Proactively look for cost savings opportunities.

4) Measure your financial results against your competitors.

5) Track your company’s financial performance against your goals.

This sounds great, but why should you care about accounting if your business has a healthy cash balance? Well, you should care because accounting will help you know if you’re profits are declining, whether there are signs of a sales slump in the future, and whether your cash will run out shortly.

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Allan Madan is a Chartered Accountant, and cross border tax expert who enjoys working with business owners, individuals and entrepreneurs. He has over 14 years of experience in public accounting. Prior to founding Madan Chartered Accountant in Mississauga, Canada, he was International Tax Manager at Deloitte for six years. .

For free online videos on how to use Wave to complete your company’s books, see Madan CA’s bookkeeping tutorials.

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Option to accept online payments
Starting at
2.9% + $0.60
per credit card transaction
Starting at
2.9% + $0*
per credit card transaction
for first 10 transactions/mo
Unlimited invoices, estimates, bills
Add your logo and brand colors
Automate late payment reminders
with online payments
Wave mobile app
Unlimited bookkeeping records
Dashboard and reports
Auto-import transactions
Auto-merge transactions
Auto-categorize transactions
Add users
Live-person chat and email support
with any paid add-on
Digitally capture unlimited receipts
additional fee
Payroll
additional fee
additional fee
Hire a bookkeeper
additional fee
additional fee

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The information and tips shared on this blog are meant to be used as learning and personal development tools as you launch, run and grow your business. While a good place to start, these articles should not take the place of personalized advice from professionals. As our lawyers would say: “All content on Wave’s blog is intended for informational purposes only. It should not be considered legal or financial advice.” Additionally, Wave is the legal copyright holder of all materials on the blog, and others cannot re-use or publish it without our written consent.

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