A business owner’s priority is generating sales and driving their business. It’s important to be aware of finances, but managing them and keeping them organized can easily be outsourced to a virtual assistant. So, how do you use a virtual assistant for your bookkeeping? Here are some of the bookkeeping tasks a virtual assistant can do.
Ensure Timely Bill Payment
Your virtual assistant can manage all of your bills and ensure they get paid on time. They can input them into your accounting system, set due dates, payment reminders, and make sure the billing information is correct. They can help you go paperless, so you don’t have to worry about receiving bills.
Reconcile Bank and Credit Card Statements
The monthly reconciliation is one of the most frustrating parts of managing business finances. As long as your assistant has access to your bank and credit card statements (email statements or provide online banking access), they can do the reconciliation within your accounting system.
Prepare and Send Invoices to Customers
Your virtual assistant can prepare and send estimates and invoices to customers on your behalf. Subsequently, they can follow up on outstanding invoices until they are paid in full.
Maintain Receipts
Keeping track of receipts can be a tough game. Your assistant will help you implement a system to log them. For paper receipts, it can be as simple as scanning and emailing with your phone. For digital ones, route receipts to your assistant or create a rule in your email platform. As long as they have access, they’ll be able to maintain, input, and organize them.
Tax Preparation
Your assistant can track your sales tax and prepare tax forms such as 1099’s or W-2’s for employees. If you use an accountant, your assistant can compile and organize all necessary information, documents, and reports for them.
Help You Set a Budget
Use your assistant to help you set and stay on budget. They can let you know when you’re over or under budget and redistribute allocations if necessary. Most accounting softwares have reports that track your cash flow to help you stay on budget.
Keep Track of Renewals
Things like rent, insurance, and software subscriptions are typically on a renewal basis. Your assistant can keep track of the renewal dates and prepare for any annual payment increases. They can help you determine if the service being provided needs to be renewed, renegotiated, or canceled.
Run Financial Reports
Most accounting systems have built-in reporting functions. Your assistant can run reports so that you have a better financial understanding of your business. Financial reports include:
- Profit & Loss Statements.
- Balance Sheets
- Income Statements
- Cash Flow Statement
Payroll
An experienced bookkeeping virtual assistant can take your timesheets and run the payroll to ensure all the correct deductions are applied and keep up with changing tax laws.
Manage Inventory
Most accounting systems can track inventory. Your assistant will let you know when inventory and operational supplies are running low and reorder if necessary.
Locate and Remediate Discrepancies
Using an assistant for bookkeeping helps ensure things don’t get missed or fall through the cracks. If you’re not regularly looking at your financials, you might not notice errors. But your assistant likely will. For example, they can locate and alert you on fraudulent credit card charges, duplicate transactions, incorrect charges, and suspicious activity.
Deciding to hand over your bookkeeping to a virtual assistant can be a smart choice. Bookkeeping requires organization and strong attention to detail – typical traits of most virtual assistants. Outsourcing your bookkeeping will increase your productivity and allow you to focus on running your business and increasing sales. We would love to have a conversation with you about your bookkeeping needs. Say hello, and we’ll be in touch to discuss our virtual bookkeeping services.
