Some tradies will choose to use an Accountant to help manage their financial records and others will use a Bookkeeper. A tradie providing roofing services in Melbourne was paying their accountant $700 inc GST per month to complete their BAS Return.
Although, they only had a bank reconciliation, one contractor, three employees and BAS Lodgement to be done.
Is a bookkeeper cheaper than using an accountant?
The tradie contacted our bookkeeper service in Melbourne to get advice on the costs they were paying. We reviewed their bookkeeping requirements and helped them understand they were paying too much by using an accountant.
Why did an accountant cost more than a bookkeeper?
The cost of the accountant was much higher than using a bookkeeper because;
- Too much time was being allocated to reconciling the payroll, they were using an unusual method that took a lot of time which was to reconcile through the electronic clearing account when all they had to do was send both the payslip & the payment to the payroll clearing account and reconcile that through the bank reconciliation section.
Taking this approach would save a lot of time & reduce the hours billed by an accountant. - They were also manually entering all the transactions for the bank feeds instead of setting up rules for transactions which can then automatically allocate information to the right areas.
So the cost of using an accountant was high because of really poor processes that took much more time to complete.
How much does a bookkeeper cost compared to using an accountant?
We provided a quotation to manage this tradie’s bookkeeping based on their situation and it would cost just $310 inc GST instead of $700 inc GST, so nearly half the cost of using an accountant.
This is just one example where using a bookkeeper can not only be cheaper than using an accountant, but more efficient too as we are experienced at helping tradies with their books. The cost of using a bookkeeper for a tradie business will vary based on what requirements you may have for your business, but we can provide a quotation to estimate your costs.
