Virtual Bookkeeping: How to Hire the Best Bookkeeper Online Bench Accounting

Bookkeeper.com’s cheapest virtual bookkeeping service starts with bookkeeping basics, like preparing key financial statements. From there, you can add comprehensive accounting, payroll, and tax services as needed. Bookkeeper.com manages your accounts using QuickBooks Online (or QuickBooks Desktop, if you prefer). Plus, not every online bookkeeping service works with both accrual-basis and cash-basis accounting—but Bookkeeper.com does. The best bookkeeping services handle your target tasks without breaking your business’s budget, integrate with your accounting software and offer a dedicated line of communication with a live bookkeeper. In addition, consider the availability of add-on services like tax planning, payroll and human resources support.

While a virtual bookkeeper can handle cash transactions, it’s faster and easier for them to categorize digital transactions (like credit card, debit, Shopify, and Paypal transactions). Bench simplifies your small business accounting by combining intuitive software that automates the busywork with real, professional human support. Jason Ding is a seasoned accountant with over 15 years of progressive experience in senior finance and accounting across multiple industries. Jason holds a BBA from Simon Fraser University and is a designated CPA. Jason’s firm, Notion CPA, is an accounting firm with a business-first focus.

Merritt Bookkeeping: Best for businesses on a budget

1. Bench gives you at-a-glance visual reports, which provide you with actionable insight that’ll help grow your small business.
2. You can cancel your QuickBooks Live plan or upgrade from Live Expert Assisted to Live Expert Full-Service Bookkeeping at anytime.
3. It also offers full-service bookkeeping, meaning that its team will do the bookkeeping for you.
4. For the vast majority of businesses, the job of bookkeeping is too small for a department but too much for the owner.

For most virtual businesses, it’s not only the customers who are in a different location but also the employees. You may all be working from home or may have a central office with colleagues working from different locations some or all of the time. While both you and the client may weighted average method choose to keep hard copies, you need a way to share them online. Using a secure file-sharing portal like Liscio makes it easy to gather the documents you need. And a workflow app like Pixie, developed specifically for small accounting firms, can tie everything together and keep you organized. Shareable online calendars reduce the back-and-forth of scheduling meetings.

If you want a higher level of support in the future, such as chief financial officer or CFO-style services, consider choosing a bookkeeping service that will allow you to upgrade later. No tax prep or accrual basis accounting, even as an add-on service. A small business can likely do all its own bookkeeping using accounting software. Many of the operations are automated in the software, making it easy to get accurate debits and credits entered. Would you rather tackle accounting yourself instead of outsourcing it to a third party? Check out our list of the year’s best accounting software for small businesses to get started.

Get matched now with top rated accounting software

With QuickBooks Live Expert Full-Service Bookkeeping, a dedicated bookkeeper will get to know your business, bring your past books up to date, and do your book for you, start to finish. There are some amazing opportunities for firms that are able to stay up-to-date on virtual-work best practices. Working virtually is new to a lot of businesses, so if you’re open to the change that’s happening, and your clients notice it, then they’ll come to you for help with that change, too. Unsure how to market your virtual accounting or bookkeeping firm? Although there may be a learning curve, virtual marketing actually has many advantages.

Is virtual bookkeeping legit?

Connect one-on-one with experts so you can manage your books with ease. Answer a few questions about what’s important to your business and we’ll recommend the right fit.

The two platforms work together seamlessly, allowing you to effortlessly bill and invoice with FreshBooks, and automatically see that income reflected in your bookkeeping. The best bookkeeping services take care of basic bookkeeping tasks, like reconciling bank statements, inputting transactions and generating financial reports. You should be able to directly call or message your bookkeeper with questions whenever necessary, and some services offer add-ons for tax planning and payroll. Live Expert Assisted doesn’t include cleanup of your books or a dedicated bookkeeper reconciling your accounts and maintaining your books for you. Live Expert Assisted also doesn’t include any financial advisory services, tax advice, facilitating the filing of income or sales tax returns, creating or sending 1099s, or management of payroll. We reviewed multiple accounting software options using a detailed methodology to help you find the 9 best online bookkeeping services for small businesses.

If you’re a freelancer, try applying your hourly rate to the time you spend on bookkeeping. For pricing, $210 a month gets you 5 hours of an administrative assistant to handle your books. For bigger businesses, the price increases as more hours of work are required. But the top-tier businesses rely on up-to-date books to help maximize profits, minimize costs, and make smart investments. But virtual bookkeeping (also known as remote bookkeeping) comes with drawbacks as well as benefits.