Finding an online bookkeeping service is essential for any business that wants to avoid tax problems with the IRS and needs help tracking all their financial activities every month.
However, to choose the best bookkeeping service for your business, you must first analyze all their benefits and discover how effective they can be for your situation using the following steps.
1. Determine Your Needs
Before you dive into outsourced online bookkeeping, you need to determine what bookkeeping services your company actually needs.
Here is a list of the standard bookkeeping services your business may need right now or in the future.
- Managing financial records of your business.
- Staying compliant with the IRS and your state laws.
- Planning your tax returns in advance.
- Including tax deductions to save money.
- Getting detailed financial reports
- Tracking your account payables and account receivables.
You could also need other bookkeeping services like bank statement reconciliation if your business has not checked for discrepancies between your books and your bank account in weeks or months.
Some bookkeeping services also include payroll management which is perfect if your company has a lot of employees and independent contractors working with your clients.
This service will help you calculate their salaries, adjust their deductions, and schedule payments automatically, allowing you to focus 100% of your attention on your business.
Once you determine the bookkeeping services your business needs the most, you can weed out the services that don’t meet your standards and make a list of the online platforms that can solve the problems your company has right now.
2. Compare Features and Pricing
After you determine the bookkeeping services your business needs, you must compare the features and pricing of each online platform available to you and find which one has the best benefits for your situation.
You can easily do this by going to their different websites and checking out their pricing plans that are available to the public.
In this place, you will see a list of all the features available on each plan and the price point you will need to pay to enjoy their services.
You can expect to pay at minimum $200 on average for the most affordable online bookkeeping services in 2023 and up to $500 for the most expensive options that have everything you need.
You also need to consider that the prices of these online bookkeeping services will vary over time depending on the added value of each plan and the new features they include on their website.
As a general rule, the higher the value they provide to all their customers, the higher the price you will have to pay for their bookkeeping service. Just keep that in mind.
3. Ask Questions
Once you compare prices and check out all their features, you need to start asking different questions about their services through customer support on their website.
You could also ask questions directly through their email, social media platforms, and other online forums available on the internet.
Here are some of the popular questions you can ask them to make sure they can provide you with an excellent bookkeeping service that will fit your needs.
- Can the service help me solve a specific problem?
- Do you have special deals or discounts in the next few months?
- What other benefits do new customers get?
- Is there a refund policy for the service?
- Why is this service better than the rest?
- Do you provide customer support 24/7?
Remember to be specific when possible and ask other questions or doubts you have about their services during this step.
These questions will help you get more detailed information about their services and understand how they can help your company solve its bookkeeping problems over the next few weeks, months, or years.
It could also help you save money by asking them for a better deal and leveraging their special discounts during the holiday season.
4. Read Customer Reviews
Another way to find which online bookkeeping services are the best for your company is by reading the customer reviews of previous clients who had already hired them since they will tell you all the details about their experience using their service.
You can do this by looking for testimonials on their website, reading review articles from industry experts on Google, or watching different YouTube videos from people who already use their online bookkeeping services in the past.
To get the best results, try to read as many customer reviews as possible from different online platforms to ensure you get accurate information about their online bookkeeping service, including the good and the bad.
Doing this will help you determine the quality and trustworthiness of their online bookkeeping service. It will also show you if they have a positive track record with all their customers over the last few years and allow you to confirm if they are a good fit for your company.
5. Test It Out
The next step you need to follow is to test out their online bookkeeping services for a short time and see how they could help you solve your company’s financial problems.
You can do this by going through their website and signing up for their free plan, which has all the basic features you may need at the beginning. This allows you to learn more about their service and get an accurate picture of what benefits they could offer in the long run.
Other websites could offer a free trial period to their new clients where you can test out their paid services for free for a few days or weeks with no high requirements or hidden fees attached to it.
In some cases, these websites could also offer a lower entry fee for new customers to help them test out their services at the beginning and help them save money when they start to work with them.
However, in each case, you will have to create a free account on their website and follow the basic steps they show you at the beginning.
Doing this will allow you to start using the bookkeeping services immediately and test out all the features they offer.
What is Next?
If you follow these steps one by one, you will find the best online bookkeeping service that fits the current needs of your business and allows you to keep your finances under control.
Just make sure to evaluate the pros and cons of each online bookkeeping service, take a look at their customer reviews, and test them out before you make the final decision.
