Pro Tips: Making the Most of Your Partnership With Your Bookkeeper

You already know that your bookkeeper is a number whiz and organizational master. 

A lesser-known secret? 

You and your bookkeeper can collaborate to create a powerful partnership — one that helps you maximize your combined efficiency and elevate your financial decision-making.

Once you and your bookkeeper have the bookkeeping basics down, leverage your relationship not just by understanding the numbers, but by exploring different ways to work with them. 

Want to start with essential tips on how to work with a bookkeeper? You’ll find the basics here: 6 Questions to Ask Your Bookkeeper to Build Financial Confidence and Clarity

Here are our pro tips for making the most of this collaboration.

6 Ways to Optimize Your Work With Your Bookkeeper 

Pro tip 1: Get organized

Optimization starts with organization: the less time you spend chasing receipts, the more you can spend on more lever-moving tasks. 

Develop simple systems with your bookkeeper that work for both of you. This could look like using shared folders, keeping receipts together by category, using a consistent file naming convention, and agreeing on an internal deadline for when you’ll upload your documents. 

You’ll find some more ideas on how to put a package together for your bookkeeper in this post: How to Put Your Monthly Package Together for Your Bookkeeper (and What to Include)

Pro tip 2: Give context when it strikes

This is a tip for those one-off transactions or business decisions that your bookkeeper needs to know about. For example, entering into a new loan, or hiring a new person.

Rather than waiting for the end of the month, send your bookkeeper a note (and any related documents) in the moment. This will put it on their radar and save you from remembering what happened, when, and where the documents are later in the month. 

You can also apply this tip to smaller transactions; for example, if you paid for something in cash, write yourself a reminder right then. If you’re out for a business lunch, quickly jot down who you went with and the purpose of the meeting afterward.

Pro tip 3: Request additional reports

You don’t have to limit it to the standard balance sheet and profit or loss statement. Discuss what kind of reports your bookkeeper is able to provide that would help you manage your business, such as:

• Statement of cash flows - for a better understanding of the flow of cash each month

• Monthly or year-to-date comparatives - to spot patterns or trends

• Aged accounts receivable and accounts payable summaries - to help manage your flow of cash

• Inventory listing - to ensure it’s accurate and up-to-date

You can also walk through these reports together to develop your understanding and get important insights into your daily operations.

Pro tip 4: Explore key metrics

There are many key metrics your business could use to track its financial health and performance. If you’re aware of certain industry rules of thumb, you can ask your bookkeeper if they can prepare a report with the data you need to calculate them.

Some common metrics for financial health that you could calculate using your bookkeeper’s data:

• Gross margin - to track profitability 

• Accounts receivable turnover - to ensure cash is collected in a timely manner

• Inventory turnover - to track how your business is meeting its demand

• Current ratio - to make sure your business can comfortably meet its short-term liabilities

Tracking these metrics will help you quickly identify where adjustments are needed to support your business’s financial health.

Pro tip 5: Ask if they can help you create a budget

Budget creation isn’t within every bookkeeper’s scope (although it doesn’t hurt to ask). But you can learn to create your own business budget starting with the reports that your bookkeeper generates. 

How? A common place to begin building a budget is with the last year (or last few years) of financial results from the profit or loss statement.

If you do use a budget, you can also see if your bookkeeper is able to prepare a budget-to-actual report.

Pro tip 6: Connect your bookkeeper to your accountant

If you work with a bookkeeper and an accountant, make sure that the two connect! Often, your bookkeeper can answer many of the questions that your accountant will have for you, which could free up a considerable amount of your time. 

Sometimes the two are able to collaborate on processes as well, with the aim to streamline your year-end tax reporting. As a bonus, this could help keep your accounting fees at a minimum.

Ready for more financial clarity in your small business?

Make the most of your relationship with your bookkeeper by keeping the basics organized and efficient, creating more time to explore your business’s financial reports meaningfully. 

If this sounds like your ideal partnership, we encourage you to reach out to us at Robles Bookkeeping to see how we can collaborate to reach your business goals. We can get started with a free evaluation of your books. Click here to schedule with us — we look forward to seeing how we can support your growing business.