A bookkeeping firm or self employed professional bookkeeper can provide either Onsite bookkeeping service or Offsite bookkeeping service.

With onsite bookkeeping, a bookkeeper you hire comes to work at your place of business. The obvious advantage is you are only paying for the days/hours that you need. You do not have to offer any employee benefits. You pay the bookkeeper or firm like any other vendor or supplier, no paycheque is involved.

You will still need to do some of the work yourself, like collecting bills and opening the mail during the days when he or she is not working onsite.

With offsite bookkeeping, a bookkeeper or bookkeeping firm does the work at their offices. You will have to prepare and send your financial documents like invoices, bills, bank statements, etc. to the bookkeeping firm.

Some firms send a courier to pick up your documents or you could use our ‘5 minutes a day’ bookkeeping methods. Take 5 minutes at the end of your day or first thing in the morning and scan all relevant documents into a folder on your computer. Name the folder the date for that day. Every day, you email the folder to your bookkeeper or upload to their server. 5 minutes a day and you’re done!

Another option is to have the bookkeeper use a remote login procedure. There are programs like Go To Assist, PC Anywhere and even Windows Remote Desktop Connection that connects your offsite bookkeeper to your computers and allows access to your files and documents. The bookkeeper is working on your computer from their office. The advantage to this system is you host the software program on your computer allowing you to also access the program when you need to (on the road, vacation, business trip). You can then view invoices, customer accounts and run reports on how your business is doing financially whenever you want. Remember, it does tie up your computer for the time the bookkeeper is signed in remotely.

An emerging trend is “cloud computing”; the key benefits of this option are multiple user remote access at one time. Quick & easy access to your accounting software– anytime, anywhere with an internet connection.

With all these available economical choices for small businesses it makes it easy to get your books done and move your business forward with sound financial information at your fingertips, wherever you happen to be.

Dianne Mueller, CPB www.simplysoma.com

Soma Small Business Solutions