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Should You Choose A Bookkeeper, A CPA Or An Accountant?

Already you have embarked on a line of business, which seems to be going great guns. However, it appears that success so far has not blinded you to the need of having your accounts straight and proper in the long run, when you will need accurate information to base your big decisions on, and you will not be always lucky getting away with ad hoc decisions blindly taken. In this connection, you are confronted with three alternatives for streamlining your accounting system. You can choose from a CPA (Certified Public Accountant), an Accountant or a Book Keeper. Let us consider the pros and cons of the options available.

The main factor between choosing one or another option is the cost factor. No doubt you always strive to minimize financial costs; but at what economic cost? That is the question on which you have to decide. Which of the above three options will give you the best value for what you pay, taking into consideration the actual needs of your business, so that you would not be unnecessarily paying for something extravagant or superfluous to your actual requirements.

Hiring a CPA is likely to cost you something between $250 and $500 a month. It is the most expensive option and should be exercised only if you have extensive consultancy work and tax issues for which you would otherwise anyway have to incur heavy professional charges to outside agencies. If you do not have problems of such complexity and magnitude, then the services of a CPA can be counted as superfluous to your business and a totally unnecessary expense to your company which is still in its infancy.

There will be hardly any difference between an Accountant and a Certified Public Accountant as far as their accounting capabilities are concerned except that a CPA has the power to certify in virtue of a 4-year degree with supportive examinations passed to his credit. If you do not specifically need a Certified Accountant for your organization, you can get the same work done equally competently by employing an average Accountant at a cost of between $200 and $400 a month.

As already stated earlier, what is important to you is whether you need a CPA to do the work of an Accountant or an Accountant to do the work of a Book Keeper. A good Book Keeper should be able to manage your books of accounts, prepare periodical accounts and required financial statements and if necessary prepare the payroll and attend to some tax matters like sales taxes if not all of your tax matters; and at a very much lower cost which may range from $150 to $300 a month.

Even if you hire a higher rung part time CPA or an Accountant, the chances are that they too in turn will hire a Book Keeper to get the spade work done keeping a margin for themselves for bearing responsibility to you. If the work involved in your business is of a basic type, and not very voluminous, then you would be strongly advised to retain a Book Keeper for your accounting work and save over $200 a month on your outlay on maintaining proper accounts.

Another advantage of having a full time Book Keeper, even if you do need the services of an Accountant or a CPA on part time or contractual basis is that once the Book Keeper has posted all your basic books of accounts, your Accountant / CPA will not have to hire a Book Keeper to write up your books from scratch and will therefore bill you only for a far lesser quantum of work involved in his checking, finalizing and certifying etc.

Reducing costs at every juncture should not be the sole criteria in running a business efficiently and profitably. What you stand to lose in different ways by pruning costs in other directions should be very judiciously weighed and carefully considered. You are advised to call and interview a selection of possible CPAs, Accountants and Book Keepers and schedule their expected services and rates and do a good research of it prior to making a final decision.

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