If you’re doing your business’s taxes and bookkeeping on your own, it may be worthwhile to consider a virtual accountant. Virtual accounts can help propel business growth, alleviate the burden of managing your books and do it while freeing up time and resources for your business.
We’re going to discuss a few of the many ways that a virtual accountant can help you grow your business.
12 Ways a Virtual Accountant Can Help Promote Business Growth
1. Identify Potential Financial Issues
Businesses may have underlying financial issues that go unnoticed. A virtual accountant can help identify potential financial issues, such as:
- Bad debt and practices to reduce it
- Financial issues holding back growth
- Low-profit margin products or services
- Etc
Sometimes, a fresh perspective on a product or service may show that by eliminating it, you’ll boost sales in other areas of your business and generate more revenue, too.
2. Assist You and Your Business in Creating Good Habits
Small businesses often have habits that aren’t the best for accounting and bookkeeping. For example, an owner or partner in the business may start off handling all of the books and have archaic systems in place that cause unnecessary resource requirements.
A virtual accountant can help you create business and financial habits that save you both time and money.
Your accountant can even put processes in place that you or your employees can follow to keep your business well-organized.
3. Free Up Time So That You Can Focus on Core Tasks
Transitioning into a single role instead of trying to juggle all of your operations is one way to grow your business. Often, owners take on too many roles that pull them away from core business growth tasks.
For example, when you have an accountant working to manage your books, you save time that you can now dedicate to product creation or landing new customers.
4. Run Cash Flow Forecasts and Projections
A staggering 82% of businesses fail because of cash flow issues. Cash flow projections shed light on your business’s cash flow and allow you time to:
- Reduce time between invoice payments
- Secure financing
- Reduce overhead costs
Virtual accountants can run cash flow projections for the quarter, year, or even further out to help you get insight into your business’s financial health.
5. Find Key Ways to Save Money on Taxes
Taxes are a part of doing business. If you generate revenue, you have to pay taxes. However, using the tax code, there are ways to reduce your taxes drastically. An accountant can help ensure that you’re taking every deduction and tax credit that you can to lower your tax burden.
Through tax planning, which is completely different from tax preparation, you can save money on your taxes over the short- and long-term.
6. Provide Strategic Guidance for Your Business
Growth decisions have an impact on your business. Strategic guidance allows you to view the impact of your decisions by monitoring cash flow and goals. For example, you may spend $1 million on product development and manufacturing as part of your growth strategy. Through guidance, you’ll:
- Create breakeven goals
- Determine when cash flow will be positive
- Etc
Strategic guidance is an excellent addition to any business trying to enter a growth phase that wants to use data to see how its decisions are impacting business in real-time.
7. Discover Ways to Obtain Funding, If Necessary
Your business may have a lot of liquidity with strong cash flow and not need funding. However, only 45% of businesses leverage lending to help address financial issues. An accountant can work to find favorable lending terms and options to fund your business operations.
8. Manage and Restructure the Business
Sometimes, a simple structure change of a business offers tax advantages. A virtual accountant can help you weigh the option of restructuring your business and point out potential benefits, such as:
- Improved efficiency
- Tax savings
Additionally, the accountant can help you learn the pitfalls of restructuring and navigating states and federal tax impacts.
9. Shed Light on the Value of Your Business
What is the actual value of your business? Learning the value of your business is crucial, even if you don’t plan to sell, because it is useful when creating a succession plan. Additionally, if you do plan on selling, there may be ways to increase the value of your business before the sale.
10. Support Sales, Expansions, and Mergers
If you do plan to sell or merge your business, shedding light on the value of your business is crucial to ensuring that the deal is in your best interest. Learning your company’s value is also beneficial when you’re looking to expand.
Why?
You can use value to leverage more funding or attract investors. A virtual accountant can support you through the expansion process to reduce costly mistakes along the way.
11. Help You Catch Up on Organizing Books
Are your books an unorganized mess? If so, a virtual accountant can help you organize your books so that you can make sense of your finances.
12. Recommend and Setup Accounting Software
If you don’t have accounting software in place, a virtual accountant can help recommend options and help you set up these platforms. One survey found that 73% of accountants are confident with recommending technology implementation, so there’s a good chance that your accountant will be, too.
For example, your accountant may be able to help you differentiate between Bill.com vs. QuickBooks Online and find solutions that work best for your business.
Wrapping Up
A virtual accountant can help you grow your business today and into the future. If you’re still doing all of your accounting in-house or just rely on software to ensure that your books are in order, you can benefit from working with a real accountant.
An accountant will look outside of the box to help pinpoint issues, run forecasts, provide strategic guidance and so much more.
Plus, when you offload some work to a virtual accountant, you’re freeing up time that is better spent on core business tasks.
If you need help with your accounting and want to grow your business, schedule an appointment with us today.
