Small- to mid-sized business owners have a lot of responsibilities on their plate. As the leader of a company, you are responsible for its income, balance sheets, and tax payments.
If you are currently a one-person show where you handle all accounting duties, you might quickly find you need help.
With the help of professional accountants and bookkeepers, you can free up time for other priorities. You can focus on your customers or products while your new bookkeeper handles capturing your financial data.
What are some of the pros and cons of outsourcing bookkeeping services? Read on for this bookkeeping service guide about Bench.co and how they might work for you as a bookkeeping service.
Bookkeeping Basics for You
Before digging into Bench.co for bookkeeping, it makes sense to review some basic bookkeeping concepts.
What do you do when you’re keeping the books?
Bookkeeping is how a business records all of the financial transactions related to the business. Some companies will do this manually on paper charts, and others will use a computer program.
Some businesses opt to outsource their bookkeeping duties to someone else. The size of your business and the number of accounts and transactions will often impact how you record your bookkeeping.
Bookkeepers could record the businesses’ financial transactions daily or as they come in. Some businesses will opt to record the information on the account charts once a month.
It’s essential for a business when doing their bookkeeping to reconcile their accounts with bank statements and move the information to their financial statements.
There are some basic but important bookkeeping terms to know. These include the following:
- Assets or things of value like cash, inventory, or accounts receivables
- Liabilities or debts, loans, or account payable balances
- Income or revenue for the business
- Expenses like rent, the electric bill, accounting services
A business will need to know its equity value, which can be calculated by subtracting its liabilities from the assets.
How Is Bookkeeping Different from Accounting?
It’s not uncommon for bookkeeping and accounting to be used synonymously, though they are not the same.
Think of bookkeeping as a preliminary function of keeping business transactions. A bookkeeper’s tasks are related to record-keeping. They are in charge of the following:
- Collecting documentation for financial transactions
- Recording transactions in the accounting ledgers
- Classifying transactions as debits or credits
- Organizing the transactions according to the business accounts
While many accountants will also do bookkeeping for the business or client, an accountant’s job goes further. Once the bookkeeping records are in place, the accountant must evaluate those for a business.
The accountant does the following:
- Analyzes
- Reviews
- Interprets
- Reports financial information
In bookkeeping, the task is more rudimentary record keeping. The accounting part requires the accountant to consider what they’re seeing in the records and help guide a business’s financial decision-making.
What Is Bench.co?
Bench is an outsourced bookkeeping service for small businesses. What is a bookkeeping service, and what do they do for you as a small business?
When you hire Bench, they take care of your bookkeeping needs and provide a wealth of small business support so that you can focus on your business.
As a client of Bench, you get a personal dedicated financial expert who handles your bookkeeping needs and connects you to a team of in-house small business experts.
You provide the necessary information to Bench, and they input the information so you can get a monthly financial statement. You can also get at-a-glance visual reports on different aspects of your bookkeeping, so you always have a clear view of your business’s financial picture.
What Can Bench.co Do for You?
Are you considering whether to hire a bookkeeping service for your small business? Wondering how the bookkeeping service would aid your business?
It might help you to understand how Bench would work with your business to decide if this is the right move for you.
If you opted to work with Bench, they would assign you a bookkeeper who works to get to know your business, gather needed materials from you, and show you more specifically what to expect from Bench.
Your personal bookkeeper will update your records monthly and create financial statements for you.
Remember, it’s their job to know your business. So, if they have questions about entries, transactions, or any other part of the process, they will be in touch with you right away.
Your personal accountant will deliver your business financial statements monthly and at tax time, all the documents you need to process your taxes.
Bench.co and Small Business Tax Services
Bench for bookkeeping prides itself on offering businesses important tax services.
In addition to year-round bookkeeping services, when clients of Bench sign up for the premium plan, they also get unlimited tax advisory support.
Depending on your business structure, you may face a variety of tax deadlines throughout the year. It doesn’t matter if your business is an S corporation, a partnership, a C corporation, or a sole proprietorship.
Bench knows all the necessary deadlines from the IRS for your business structure, and the specialized tax team will work to make sure you get in what needs to get turned in.
If you come to them as a client and are a little behind with your taxes, Bench will do what it takes to help you get back on track.
Behind in Bookkeeping? Let Bench.co Catch You Up
The reality of being a small business can be daunting. There are many demands on your time and energy.
The simple truth is that it’s not uncommon for small business owners to fall behind on their bookkeeping record keeping.
If you come to Bench and are behind in your bookkeeping, they will do what it takes to get you caught up.
The Bench team will assign you your personal bookkeeper. If needed, they’ll assign extra members from our team to get your records caught up and up-to-date. Knowing your financial picture is as important to us as it is to you.
What Is Bench Retro?
At Bench, there’s the idea of being a little behind on taxes. There’s also the idea of being really behind.
No judgment from the Bench team. It can be easy for a small business to fall significantly behind with bookkeeping and tax records.
Bench offers a special part of their services called Bench Retro to address just this scenario.
When you sign up for Bench Retro services, you get the following:
- A specialized team of experts to get you caught up
- Back taxes filed
- Your business records cleared up
If you’re facing those not-so-friendly letters from the IRS and your paperwork is overflowing, they won’t scare Bench. Their team won’t have the expected emotional response you might feel.
They’ll be ready to dig in and solve your issues and get you caught. Retro services have a specialized team who knows the intricacies of being behind with the IRS and will work to get you back on track.
Bench.co Pricing
As you consider hiring bookkeeping services, it’s pretty realistic to wonder whether your small business can afford to hire Bench for your bookkeeping needs.
There are two plan options available through Bench. You have the option to pay monthly or annually. When you opt to pay for a year upfront, you garner some significant discounts.
Bench offers the Essential plan, which is $249 a month when you pay annually. They also offer the premium plan, which comes with bookkeeping and additional tax services for $399 per month when paid annually.
When you consider cost, it’s important to remember a few things. What would it cost you to hire an employee a month to provide the same services, and would they have the same level of expertise as the team at Bench?
Maybe you wouldn’t be hiring another person and you’re attempting to do the job yourself. Imagine how much more time you’ll have to focus on other aspects of your business when someone else is handling these tasks for you.
Getting a Bookkeeping Service
There are a number of advantages to hiring a service like Bench to provide bookkeeping services for your small business.
When you opt to outsource these tasks, you don’t have to do it yourself or pay someone else to do it. You also get an expert at bookkeeping keeping track of your financial documents.
There won’t be any more falling behind in bookkeeping or even wondering where you stand financially. Each month, your personal bookkeeper will provide you with all the financial documents you need to know where you stand as a business.
When tax season rolls around, there won’t be the inevitable scramble to figure it out. Your bookkeeper can keep the records you need for taxes up to date.
Other considerations for hiring a service like Bench include they are solely a bookkeeper. They don’t also offer things like accounting services in conjunction with bookkeeping.
Bench only offers cash basis of accounting vs. accrual basis. As a business owner, you should want to be on an accrual basis.
One other consideration to know about Bench is that your communication is handled via chat services versus being able to talk live to your bookkeeper.
Bookkeeping Services From Bench.co
If you’re looking for a bookkeeping service for your business, consider Bench.co to help you handle your bookkeeping and taxes.
However, if you’re looking to hire for more than just bookkeeping services and need accounting services and tax planning, we can help. Schedule a call with our financial experts to discuss how we can help your business.