“A bookkeeper should be hired from the beginning of a business to at least set up the books,” she says. Delorenzo also suggests small business owners and entrepreneurs get trained on how to use their company’s accounting system to avoid costly and time-consuming errors. Doing so will likely help at tax-time. “The messier the books, the more a tax preparer will charge to clean them up,” she says.

Al Beatty, a CPA in Jackson, Ohio, suggests it’s time for a company to hire a bookkeeper when employees, not independent contractors, are hired to help run the business. That’s because payroll taxes and other deductions are involved, and that can get complicated.

Just like with anything else, says Beatty, if a small business owner ignores the financial aspects of their company, the entity’s future probably isn’t bright. “If you don’t care to take the time to do your own records then hire someone to do it,” he says.

What to look for in a bookkeeper
According to Delorenzo, just because a bookkeeper brings experience to the job doesn’t mean they are good at what they do. “The best way to know if the bookkeeper will work for you is to contact their client references or read their client reviews online to learn what type of clients they’ve worked with and what types of tasks they’ve handled for them,” she says.

Other questions to ask a bookkeeping candidate include:
- Their experience working on the financials of businesses like yours, or at least similar to it
- Whether the bookkeeper’s clients are businesses in only one industry or a variety
- The length of time clients tend to retain the bookkeeping candidate
- The varying sizes of the companies the bookkeeper works for

“Many years of experience with few employers or few clients doesn’t necessarily tell them if the bookkeeper is right for them. The bookkeeper might have done work for the few employers/clients all those years but often times, the work has been repetitive and didn’t require any problem-solving or they were never required to learn anything new,” notes Delorenzo. She says it’s also important for business owners to realize that corporate accounting differs vastly from small business accounting, so just because a bookkeeper is proficient in one does not necessarily mean they are knowledgeable about the other.

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Tami Kamin Meyer is an Ohio attorney and writer. She may be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or @girlwithapen.