I am getting hungry and want to focus more on increasing sales and taking some things off my plate. I was wondering what people use for book keeping services (i.e. spouse, themselves, accountant, part time book keeper, online service) I am assuming most use quickbooks as far as software but i am talking about a scenerio where I can scan all invoices to destination, they would have access to account balances and transactions, etc. Do the Books in general.
thanks in advance.
WC06
I use an accountant and we use Quickbooks, and excel for certain things. I keep a spreadsheet personally that tracks every penny so at anytime i can see where i am at. You get what you pay for when it comes to accounting. If your not willing to pay for a good one, don’t expect to get anything out of them.
We bit the bullet and hired a restaurant focused accountant to do everything. 500 bucks a month.
We use ADP for payroll. They calculate withholding and handle that payment to IRS and state, issue paychecks, file the 941s, issue W-2 and 1099s, handle IRS inquiries. This costs us about $1000 per year.
My manager calculates food cost and reports to me weekly which takes less than hour including time to take the inventory. He also runs the POS report for labor and calls in the hours to ADP every two weeks which also takes less than an hour.
Most other bills are paid by credit card including all food purveyors other than Pepsi. I write about 5-6 other checks per month including the two for sales taxes and the gas bill. Writing those checks and tracking those expenses takes about an hour a month plus a few hours at year end. I supply the income and expense summary to our CPA to file tax returns.
I want to do the basic book keeping myself in any case because it keeps me on top of costs. I am also far more likely to spot a billing mistake than an accountant is.
Total annual investment: $1000 for ADP, $550 to CPA for state and federal returns.
My time spent per year: about 20 hours.
As a small business owner, I would not want to give up the connection to the numbers. On the other hand I certainly understand wanting to outsource something to save time. For me payroll is the piece that takes up time and shows me nothing. Once I get the cash required number from ADP I have the info I need. I not need to know the withholding info per employee etc. I can get the breakdown of kitchen labor and driver labor from the POS with a few mouse clicks if I want to see that. The rest of the book keeping does not take much time and keeps me on top of where the money is going.
We use Wells Fargo payroll service, formally ADP, Quick Books imputed my my wife, tax service (no CPA) $400.00 for year end. Fortunately my wife has an accounting/banking background and is great with the paperwork!