If there’s one silver lining from our year of working from home, it’s that we can all now work from home.
The pool of professionals you can hire from suddenly got a lot bigger. Instead of having to hire bookkeeping services from your immediate area, you may be able to hire one online who can work just as efficiently from several states away.
There are some considerations before you decide if you are happy to work with someone you haven’t met yet. It may be the case that your industry requires regular face-to-face meetings, in which case hiring someone to work remotely may not be a possibility. For everyone else, there are some things to think about when deciding to hire a bookkeeper to work remotely or in person.
State legalities
The first and foremost consideration is whether there are any quirks of your state’s laws that would forbid cross-state financial recording. There may be a requirement for you to keep your records on-site or within a specific cloud system alongside your hard copies.
The easiest thing to do might be to have a conversation with a bookkeeping service in your area, or speak to a trusted friend or advisor if you have one. If your company already works with an accountant, they may be able to recommend a bookkeeper, and if this is someone who works remotely then you might still be able to benefit.
When it comes to your industry and the requirements you need to fulfill, this is also a consideration. Weigh up the pros and cons of hiring someone to work remotely online. If you find that you have a rapport with someone who is a few states over, this might be better than a bookkeeper in your area that you find it difficult to communicate with.
Benefits of online working
Hiring someone to work from their own office or home means that you do not have to pay the overheads of that person’s space in the office. This is an immediate saving, though you could still be liable for contributing to their home and water.
Other plus points that may be slightly out of left field are if there is a time difference at play. A remote worker on the opposite coast may not be available for meetings throughout your workday, but they may also be carrying out their job before you are ready for the day. This might be the difference needed to get on top of any issues that crop up.
It will also mean there is a point of contact for your employees at a time outwith their normal working hours, which could be useful. These are all things that are worth thinking about as remote working has improved so much in the past year. We are all used to online meetings, management systems, and cloud-based storage, so working with someone remotely isn’t as difficult as once it was.
Key considerations
However, some considerations may make hiring a local bookkeeping service more favorable.
If you regularly receive source documents in paper form, as opposed to digital, then it might not be worth your while trying to make a relationship with a remote worker viable. The admin involved in shipping hard copies of documents to them, or else scanning and sending them, would be too high.
They will also have the responsibility of filing these documents once they are recorded elsewhere, a task that is much more difficult for someone out of state.
A local bookkeeper or bookkeeping service might also have insider information on your industry or customer base. They may have a unique viewpoint that comes only from knowing your area intimately. If this is something important to the nature of your business or working practices, it’s a good idea to recognize that ahead of time.
And, while online work has improved tenfold, some companies are founded on their culture. If your business thrives on face-to-face meetings, conviviality, and office cooler chat, then that’s all for the good! Make sure to recognize that and make it a part of your hiring strategy. You know the saying: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
To sum up
The pandemic, while harmful in many ways, also opened up the world of online work. Industries that were struggling to come into the twenty-first century found themselves thriving in the face of this new challenge, and managing a workforce online has become routine. This means the hiring pool for your new bookkeeper or bookkeeping service is much larger than previously, and you can be sure you’re going to hire the right person for the job.
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should, though: if you know that the best bookkeeper for your company is one that lives in the neighborhood, that’s good to recognize early. The right person is out there, and all it takes to find them is a few clicks.
