Should You Hire a Business Accountant – The Pros and Cons & Everything Else You Need to Know

As a startup business or even a small business, it’s important to be money conscious and save where ever possible. This mindset often leads business owners to take on jobs they may not necessarily want to and wear multiple hats. While this can be beneficial in some areas, one job area that business owners often ‘um and ah’ over is their accounting – moreover, whether to do it themselves or hire a business accountant on the Gold Coast.

Grow Advisory Group are more than accountants; we’re business partners. We take a holistic approach to help businesses grow and succeed, offering business accounting services on the Gold Coast and bookkeeping and business advisory services. Thus, from a business planning and advice perspective, we’re the perfect team to help you decide if hiring a business accountant is the right choice for your business.

Like anything, there are pros and cons to hiring a business accountant, which we will look at today. We will also examine the duties of a business accountant and whether your small business needs – and can benefit – from one.

What are the Duties of a Business Accountant?

Before you decide whether or not your small business needs a business accountant, you first have to understand what a business accountant does, and their roles and duties can be vast and varied.

A business accountant can range from a bookkeeper to a strategic financial advisor who handles all financial aspects of a business, including preparing, interpreting, and advising on financial reports. However, generally speaking, a business accountant is more educated and skilled than a simple bookkeeper and is often used in conjunction with an in-house bookkeeper to complete the more complex bookkeeping tasks such as financial reporting and tax returns.

Typical duties of a business accountant include:

• Bank Reconciliation – Examining bank statements and comparing them to entries in the general ledger.
• Financial Data Management – Assuring the accuracy and compliance of financial documentation with applicable laws and regulations.
• Data Analysis And Advice – Discovering beneficial information, boosting productivity by identifying process improvements, and better managing risk.
• Financial Report Preparation – Assuring important financial reports are prepared and kept up to date.
• Regulatory and Reporting Compliance – Ensuring proper controls and processes are in place to meet compliance standards.
• Tax Advice & Returns – Preparing tax returns, offering tax advice and estimates, and implementing a tax structuring/restructuring plan to minimise tax bills.

These are just some of the main roles business accountants on the Gold Coast can perform. For more roles and services and to see how Grow Advisory Group may help your business, be sure to view our Business Accountanting page.

Does My Small Business Need a Business Accountant?

So, does your small business need a business accountant? That’s the question of the day.

Grow Advisory Group received an influx of enquiries from small businesses on the Gold Coast and Tweed around tax time. However, the truth is, small businesses can benefit significantly from hiring a business accountant all year round, not only at the end of the financial year.

Business accountants are more than number crunchers looking to reduce your tax bills. They’re highly skilled professionals whose ability to analyse, report, and advise on financial data can help businesses increase productivity, become more profitable, and grow, which is precisely what we at Grow Advisory Group are all about.

If you struggle to perform the duties outlined above, then chances are you need, and therefore SHOULD hire, a business accountant.

The Pros of a Business Accountant

While we may be biased, we believe the benefits of hiring a business accountant far outweigh the disadvantages.

Peace of Mind

Balancing the books, staying on top of payroll, preparing tax returns, and complying with ever-changing legislation can be highly stressful. Unless you have studied accounting and have a strong grasp of all areas of accounting, you’re likely to make mistakes that can be very costly. You may underpay staff, make poor business decisions and fail to claim maximum deductions to reduce your tax bill, to name a few things.

By hiring a business accountant from Grow Advisory Group, you can rest assured with peace of mind knowing your business finances and accounting responsibilities are being managed correctly.

Frees up Time

A business accountant isn’t just a bookkeeper who handles bank account reconciliation and payroll. They’re so much more – they have the skills and expertise to manage all aspects of your business financially, from quarterly BAS calculations and lodgement to tax advice and tax return preparation, through to financial reporting and advice. All these tasks are essential in business and take time – a lot more time if you don’t know what you’re doing.

By hiring a business accountant from Grow Advisory Group, you can free up a lot of time you would have otherwise allocated to your accounting, which you can now direct towards the growth of your business.

Aids Business Growth

Having more time to focus on the growth of your business is one thing, but unless you have the right numbers and advice, you can easily make the wrong decision, causing your business to go backwards, not forwards.

While your newly freed-up schedule allows you to focus on business growth, hiring a business accountant from Grow Advisory Group will further aid the task. You can turn to your accountant and their financial reports and advice to make smarter business decisions that will lead to continued business growth.

Decreased Human Errors

As mentioned, there’s a high chance of making human errors if the human doing your accounting is you. Professional business accountants on the Gold Coast spend years in university claiming their qualifications and learning the accounting industry to minimise human error and the liability of mistakes in your tax filing. The ATO will not go easy on you if your reasoning for submitting incorrect financial data is that you didn’t know what you were doing. It comes back to the peace of mind –  knowing that your records are correct and that your liability is minimal.

Maximises Deductions

Do you know everything you’re eligible to claim as a tax deduction to ensure you maximise your deductions? The best way to reduce your tax bill and receive a possible tax refund is by being up-to-date with the deductions you can claim, which can change annually. It’s not good enough to claim the same items you claimed the previous year – you may not be able to. If your deduction claims are found to be incorrect, you will be required to repay the tax avoided, plus pay interest of about 9% per annum.

By hiring a business accountant from Grow Advisory Group, you can rest assured knowing every possible deduction has been made and that you won’t risk any costly tax deduction mistakes.

The Cons of a Business Accountant

There are few disadvantages of hiring a business accountant on the Gold Coast.

Cost

The primary disadvantage of hiring a business accountant is their cost. While their services are not overly expensive, they’re also not free. You can expect to pay between $40 – $60 per hour for business accountants, or you can talk to Grow Advisory Group to discuss our packages.

When you think of all the advantages listed above, it’s a small price to pay, and in most cases, the benefits pay for themselves.

You can also reduce your reliance on business accountants (and costs) by performing some of the bookkeeping tasks in-house. You can read our last article, ‘Bookkeeping: What To Do In-house & What to Outsource, to see what jobs you may be able to do yourself and what tasks you can delegate to an external bookkeeper or accountant.

Disclosing Personal Information

The other disadvantage of hiring a business accountant is that you will have to disclose all personal information about your business and finances. For an accountant to do their job, they need to know every dollar your business makes and spends and its financial status.

Conclusion

If you’re drowning in a sea of daily tasks you never thought you’d have to manage yourself as a business owner, then it pays to review your situation and delegate some of these tasks to professionals.

Accounting is one task that many business owners try to manage when they’re probably better off hiring a business accountant. Doing so presents many benefits, including peace of mind, more free time to focus on business growth, financial reports and advice to back essential business decisions that aid business growth, decreased human error, and maximum deductions.

There are, of course, a couple of drawbacks, namely the cost, which is expected and the need to disclose personal information to the accountant.

If you’d like to see how the business accountants at Grow Advisory Group can help you, please give our office a call to arrange an introductory meeting. Call 07 5502 1388 for our Nerang office or 07 5599 5700 for our Tweed Heads office.

We look forward to seeing how we can help your business grow.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this blog is general in nature and does not take into account your personal situation. You should consider whether the information is appropriate to your needs, and where appropriate, seek professional advice from an accountant and/or financial adviser.