Should you Outsource your Company’s Bill Paying?

“Your goal is to consistently minimise tasks that have little impact on your firm’s broad success to make room for higher-level strategic work”

M. Darren Root – The Intentional Accountant

When outsourcing any part of your company’s operations, you need to ask yourself a few key questions. In the context of paying your company’s bills, you need to consider:

• Is this a task that only you alone have the unique skill to perform?
• Is the cost to your company of paying a bookkeeping firm to do it less than what it’s currently costing your company when you do it yourself?
• Is paying bills one of those tasks that has a big financial impact on the growth of your company?
• Does it cause you stress personally having to do it yourself?

Just because you’ve always done it, isn’t a good reason to continue doing it. As the above questions demonstrate.

When you outsource your bill paying to a good bookkeeping firm they will:

• Check bills aren’t being paid twice
• Ensure the correct suppliers are being paid for the correct amounts
• Enter the bills into your accounting software and attach copies of the bills to the transactions
• Reconcile bills against supplier statements where appropriate to ensure all bills are accounted for and paid
• Follow up with suppliers direct if bills or emails state that bank account details have changed
• Treat all documents and information confidentially
• Communicate further with you if they feel anything needs to be brought to your attention

Steps involved in outsourcing your bill paying

So what are the steps involved in outsourcing your company’s bill paying?

• Arranging with your bank to set up 2 online authorisations for paying of online bills. You will be required to do the 2nd authorisation for all bills scheduled by your bookkeeper.
• Agreeing on the frequency and day of the week that bills need to be paid
• Ensuring your bookkeeper has access to your accounting software
• Providing copies of bills and statements to your bookkeeper

The first step isn’t difficult, but many business owners don’t enjoy conversing with their banks. We usually find, however, that this is a straight-forward task for business bankers to organise. The small amount of time taken to get this first step completed is far outweighed by all the benefits of being able to outsource your bill paying.

Can you afford NOT to be outsourcing your company’s bill paying?

About us:

Festival Bookkeeping are a team of Xero advisers and bookkeepers located in Adelaide, South Australia. We help busy business owners and their teams Australia-wide. You can contact us on 0421 501 887 or sarina@festivalbookkeeping.com.au

Learn more about our bookkeeping services here: https://festivalbookkeeping.com.au/services/xero-bookkeeping-packages/

Looking for more helpful articles about bookkeeping and accounting? Try https://festivalbookkeeping.com.au/xero-payroll-4-common-mistakes and https://festivalbookkeeping.com.au/8-different-ways-to-bundle-your-services/

Read what our happy clients have to say here: https://festivalbookkeeping.com.au/testimonials/