Accurate bookkeeping is essential to any successful business. If bookkeeping is not handled effectively, receipts and paperwork will pile up. Bills will be paid late. Invoices won’t get submitted on time. And company expenses won’t get tracked.
A talented bookkeeper can save you time, provide useful business reports, share insights and alert you to red flags, and help you manage your cash flow.
Following are some tips on how to find a good bookkeeper to help support your business — and to work remotely, if needed.
How to hire a bookkeeper
The first thing to decide is whether you need to hire a bookkeeper full time or engage someone on a temporary or temporary-to-hire basis. You could use a specialized staffing agency to find skilled candidates who would be a solid match for your company until you’re ready for a full-time hire.
Robert Half recruiters look for bookkeeping candidates who are self-starters with solid communication, organizational and customer service skills. Technology expertise typically includes experience and proficiency with applications such as Microsoft Excel or QuickBooks.
Meanwhile, here are answers to some questions you might have about how to hire a bookkeeper for your company.
Let Robert Half help you hire your next bookkeeper.
1. What do bookkeepers do?
Typical duties include these essential bookkeeping tasks:
- Reconciling bank statements
- Processing payroll, accounts payable and accounts receivable
- Posting and updating journal entries
- Performing month-end closings
- Tracking fixed assets and preparing depreciation schedules
- Preparing the trial balance
Bookkeepers are expected to use their problem-solving abilities to resolve discrepancies, communication skills to produce easy-to-absorb reports and work well with other team members, and soft skills to work with vendors, suppliers and customers.
2. How can you identify the best bookkeeper candidates?
Bookkeeping practices vary between industries, so look for a track record relevant to your line of work. A bookkeeper who has worked only with fashion retailers, for instance, may not have the knowledge and experience to do an equally good job for an air-conditioning company. In other words, the relevance of a candidate's experience is often more important than the duration of experience.
You also want to be sure that your bookkeeper has experience with the recordkeeping system and software your organization uses, or you'll need to provide training.
To assess whether a bookkeeper will be able to work effectively in your industry, ask some of these job interview questions:
- Tell me about your previous bookkeeping experience.
- What were your primary responsibilities?
- What kinds of financial reports did you prepare?
- What types of accounting systems did you use?
3. Do you need to look for certifications or memberships?
Bookkeepers in the United States are not legally required to obtain a license, but they can participate in several voluntary certification programs. When candidates are certified or licensed by the National Association of Certified Public Bookkeepers (NACPB) or the American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers (AIPB), it generally means their knowledge and skills are up to date. Ask them if they carry any certifications.
The same is true of professional memberships. Bookkeepers have to pass the membership criteria of a professional organization before they're allowed to join. So, you can take professional memberships as an indicator of your candidate's professional status and commitment to his or her career.
An active membership in a professional group also helps a bookkeeper stay current with news, trends and best practices in the industry. Also, members sometimes carry professional indemnity insurance through these groups, which offers added peace of mind for you.
4. How will you know if a bookkeeper embraces accountability?
A good bookkeeper keeps your books clean and makes it easy for you to review and query the entries. Do your due diligence and ask for reference checks from accountants who have worked with your bookkeeping candidates.
For added assurance of transparency and accountability, you might want to try behavioral interview questions to get a sense of which candidates are the most honest and reliable, such as:
- Can you tell me about a time when someone claimed credit for work that you did? What did you do about it?
- Has your trustworthiness ever been challenged? What was your response to the situation?
- Tell me about a time when you made a mistake. What did you learn from it?
These questions should give some insight into how the candidate thinks and processes challenging scenarios in a professional environment.
5. What are the top benefits of hiring a bookkeeper?
Peace of mind? Yes, that’s one thing. What are some other advantages of hiring a bookkeeper?
- Fewer data entry mistakes — Not only can bookkeepers fix errors in financial transactions, but they also can keep them from happening in the first place. A bottom-line benefit for your business is that you can avoid paying late fees. And, when your invoices get sent out quickly and accurately, you get paid faster.
- Numerical clarification — If you see anything irregular or aren’t sure about your profit and loss or any bookkeeping matters, a bookkeeper can help resolve those issues.
- Simpler tax season — Uncategorized expenses? You won’t have that with a good bookkeeper, and you won’t miss any tax write-offs, either.
6. How are bookkeepers different from accountants?
Bookkeepers are expected to do the day-to-day recording of receipts, invoices and other transactions. Hiring an accountant will provide business insights based on bookkeeping information.
Accountants are often asked to interpret complex data and analyses, with duties such as producing profit-and-loss statements and filing taxes. Financial accountants calculate assets and liabilities and show outside investors how a firm is doing. Cost accountants analyze financial processes within an organization and makes recommendations for improved cost control management.
If you’re like most business owners, you’re not interested in recording all the details of every financial transaction yourself. You can hire a bookkeeper to do that. When you need high-level business advice and official reports, then you need an accountant. Both professionals will be trusted with the details of your business finances so you can do what you do best — running your business.
7. What should you pay bookkeepers?
Take time to research compensation trends for bookkeepers before you launch a job candidate search. Our Salary Calculator provides real-world salaries by location and can help you determine what level of compensation bookkeepers in your city or state might expect to earn.
How we can help you hire bookkeepers now
Robert Half has years of experience placing bookkeepers with clients on both a temporary and full-time basis. And our recruiters are well-versed in helping companies hire remote workers.
Robert Half can help the people we place securely access necessary data and applications, including virtual desktops. For workers who lack the necessary equipment at home, we can quickly provide technology tools to help them jump into action immediately.
Our highly skilled bookkeepers can work remotely from anywhere. With fewer geographic constraints, we have a larger talent pool than ever to draw from. We can find remote bookkeepers who are the right match for your specific needs. And we can help you with the hiring process from beginning to end.
Let us assist you in hiring a bookkeeper who can help your business stay on top of receipts, invoices, expenses and all the other details a good bookkeeper stays focused on day to day, month to month, and year over year.
