Hiring a bookkeeper who will work online requires a similar set of questions as it does for hiring a bookkeeper who will work onsite.

​Whether an onsite bookkeeper is a better alternative depends on your company structure, the routine and complexity of responsibilities, whether the work requires ‘team’, the need for instant communication, amount of office space available and your comfort level for working with someone offsite. 

Bookkeepers usually manage the smaller, day-to-day financial tasks such as accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll, and reconciliations.

Unlike in-house hires who go through a process of face to face interviews, reference checks, and corporate screening, the hiring process for professional bookkeeper services or contractors online is quite different.
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The process of hiring an employee can be expensive and time consuming which makes hiring a professional bookkeeper service with a team who can ‘hit the ground running’ very attractive.  

We want to share with you a few pros and cons, questions to consider and ideas about hiring a bookkeeper offsite who will work "in the cloud."

Migrating from a bookkeeper to an accountant is a major change that many business owners feel unprepared to initiate. They often ask:
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• When is using an accountant absolutely essential for a business? 
• Should a bookkeeper’s responsibilities be handed off to an accountant, or do they work best in tandem? 
• Does an accountant need to be hired in-house or can accounting functions be outsourced? 
• What do the mechanics of a successful transition plan look like and how long should it take to complete? ​​

Business owners looking to control expenses will often combine roles under a single job title to reduce headcount demands. 

​This is especially prevalent when it comes to financial positions. 

​Too often bookkeepers are asked to own financial tasks that they are not prepared to take on (like forecasting and tax preparation), while accountants are assigned busy work that they are overqualified for (like entering receipts and issuing checks). 

Many business owners wrestle with questions relating to the financial health of their companies.

​They worry about cash flow shortages, hiring expenses, the expected future value of investments, increasing materials costs, and how they will manage all of these financial uncertainties and complexities. 

Nearly everyone claims that they’re stressed these days, if not in one way, then in another.

The list of stressors is virtually endless: family, co-workers, supervisors, pets, the weather, friends, politics, and their bills.

​As a business owner or manager, you can easily add a host of other stressors to the list, one of which is employee productivity.