Accountant Cpa or Bookkeeper

Ed Sullivan

You have started your business and things are going great, now you decide you need some help with managing your books, you open the yellow pages and under accounting you see, CPA’s, Accountants and Bookkeepers. Which do you choose? Which one would be good for your small business? And what’s the difference?

There are differences, and one of those differences will be cost, and as you have learned when you started your business cost will be a factor in almost every business decision you make. Which one will get you the most for your businesses dollar? That’s a question you will have to decide depending on the services you think you will need.

A CPA (Certified Public Accountant) will be the most expensive choice, and in my opinion, too much for a small business starting out. Depending on what you need a CPA’s rates can run you an average of $250.00 to $500.00 a month and if your not in need of financial consulting or having tax problems, in my opinion you will be paying an unneeded expense on a service that wont be utilized for your business.

An Accountant can do the same things as a CPA the difference is about a 4 year degree and the required exams to be a certified public accountant, there rates wont be as high but the end results will be the same, there average rate will range from $200.00 to $ 400.00 a month with basically the same services.

A CPA and an Accountant will both do fine jobs for you, but it will cost you more than what you need to spend for something as small as managing your books, which is what you will be doing as a small business. You will take your books and all your receipts and bank statements to the account or CPA and they will hand all that to their bookkeeper who will get your books in a manageable and clean order at the rate of the accountant or CPA.

If your needs are basic and you need someone to do your books or payroll or sales tax, my advice is a bookkeeper. A bookkeeper will do just that, they will get your books in order, they can do your payroll or sales taxes and some can even do your taxes, all this a t a much lower cost, the average rate for a bookkeeper is $150.00 to $300.00 a month depending on your needs.

If you do have an accountant or a CPA and you have a bookkeeper do your books, you will still save money because your books will be in good clean shape when you give them to your accountant or CPA, meaning they don’t have to have their bookkeeper do anything and the time they bill you for will be quite less than if they had to clean up your books every month.

Cutting cost in your business is going to be something you will always look for and this little tip could be a savings you don’t want to ignore, my advice do some research, call some CPA’s Accountants and some Bookkeepers, compare their services and rates, then choose the best for your business.

Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/accounting-articles/accountant-cpa-or-bookkeeper-563068.html#ixzz0rwQJB8sa
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution