Accounting is an essential function of every business. It’s not uncommon for accountants to know more about a business than the owner. They might be able to see a cash crunch before you do, or be able to spot suspicious activity. This is why many business owners decide to have their own accountant in-house. They feel like the closest they are to the company, the safer and more compliant they’ll be. But that’s not always the case.

Being too close can also compromise you as they have ready access to your operations. In some cases, outsourcing may be the best option. As a matter of fact, it’s usually the best option for small and growing businesses. Let’s take a look at whether you should outsource your accounting or bring it in-house.

Why You Should Outsource

One of the biggest benefits of working with an outsourced solution is that you will only pay for what you need. If you’re a small and growing organisation, chances are you won’t be able to use your accountant fully during their shift.

An accounting firm will also be able to offer more services. Take Azets, for instance. They are one of the UK’s largest firms supporting SMEs and Not only do they offer tax, audit, and accounting services, but you can also get business services from Azets. This means that you’ll have an accountant and a business advisor all in one. Companies like these can grow with you and help you grow by offering all the services you need to scale up. All this without losing touch with your finances or the new rules and regulations you may have to follow.

Last, but not least, accounting firms will help you prepare clean and credible statements. This will be essential if you’re ever looking for financing or to bring an investor in.

Why You Should Keep Things In-House

However, there are cases when staying in-house might feel better for you. Maybe your company has unique needs. You might be in an ultra-specialised industry with different rules and different ways to approach bookkeeping and accounting.  If you’re having difficulty finding a firm that fits your business, then you might have to look elsewhere.

There are also cases when you might have people who can fill multiple roles. It’s not uncommon for start-ups to have people working in two departments at once. Some might work on both marketing and product development, for instance. Others might work in customer service or sales. If you have an employee that can handle both bookkeeping and other functions and your needs are limited, then you might want to take advantage of this opportunity. Note that you may still need the help of an expert accountant for things such as preparing financial documents and raising capital.

So, Which Option is the Best for You?

If you believe you won’t be prone to errors from time to time or missing some crucial benefits and deductions, then going with an in-house accounting department might not be an issue for you. The reality is that an expert accounting firm will simply have more resources on hand. They will also handle the whole HR part for you.

If you don’t understand accounting yourself and your HR staff don’t either, it’s difficult to tell how good an accountant will be. Outsourcing will take the headache out of finding and retaining top talent. Since reputational risk will be paramount, they will be also less prone to making mistakes and omissions.

So, if you were still wondering whether you should hire your accountant or outsource, we hope we were able to help. Make sure that you weigh both options and choose the best one for your organisation in its current state.

Consider the best CRM for startups.

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Pros:

• CRM, which is most suitable for a startup, allows you to view pipelines, audio calls (including recorded conversations), SMS, receive reporting, and marketing functionality by e-mail in a single place (this also includes a customizable order of received messages).
• With pre-recorded voice mail, sales reps save time, while automatic dialing allows you to dial 2 or more numbers at the same time to increase productivity.
• Numerous integrations with other platforms, such as Facebook.

Minuses:

• Bulk importing of information from CSV files often causes repeat leads. This requires manual cleaning.

Agile

Pros:

• Availability of a free CRM system for sales, designed for startups up to 10 people.
• The platform combines management of personal contacts, automated marketing, real-time alerts, VoIP telephony, social networks, and monitoring of e-mails and Internet sites.
• The ability to use your own appointment calendar so that Agile automates every upcoming voice call and further actions.
• Ease of attaching documentation to deals, contacts, e-mails directly inside the application.

Minuses:

• A sudden rise in cost when a user changes the version of this service. As a result, difficulties are possible when it is necessary to scale the company.
• The customization options are not so numerous.

HubSpot

Pros:

• Process management, improved project management. Thanks to this, the user can monitor potential customers, work with them, track the sales process, record interactions with the clientele for each channel.
• There is a special program specifically for startups. It offers discounts of up to 90 percent for startups, as well as one-to-one training and onboarding.
• Ability to work with G Suite and Office. Because of this, no matter which platform is preferred for the business, this system works perfectly.
• By integrating with Zapier, you can easily exchange information between applications such as Google Sheets, Slack, and others to expand functionality and help your expanding business.
• The system is free of charge, which makes it possible to get started at no cost. At the same time, the commercial packages include reporting, broader automation, and AI.

Minuses:

• Limited customization options, which can be difficult for a niche startup.
• The main free functions of the system are numerous, but they are among the main ones, as a result of which you may need to buy Sales Hub or some other additional HubSpot package to expand the system’s capabilities.

Copper

Pros:

• Providing functionality that is convenient for startups, including automatic input of information, intelligent identification, monitoring of clients and leads, optimization of opportunities.
• The presence of native integration with the G Suite service. This allows you to import information from Gmail and other Google tools without any problems.
• The system demonstrates attractive sales funnels, making them easy to track and manage potential customers.

Minuses:

• Prior training required.
• The likelihood of a problem with importing information from Excel.

More and more big companies are looking at staff augmentation as a viable way to expand and strengthen their business in the near future. In the lines below, we’ll examine some of the pros and cons of staff augmentation, in order to help you decide whether or not it’s the right choice for you and your business.

What is staff augmentation and what do you need to know about it?

As the name suggests, staff augmentation is the outsourcing practice of bringing in outside help for a limited period of time. Through staff augmentation, companies manage to fill in gaps in their work-force, usually on a temporary basis, due to illness, vacation, leave, or simply excess demand. In other words, companies use staff augmentation when there’s more work to be done than there are people on their team.

However, rather than having to fill out a contract and permanently hire someone to take care of the work (a move that may prove detrimental to the business at some point), they simply bring in talent on a limited basis.

So now that we know the basics of what staff augmentation is, let’s look at why it might be the right idea for you. And why it might not.

Pros and Cons of Staff Augmentation

The Benefits

• It gets you access to localized expertise. Many times, companies use staff augmentation to bring in an expert in a certain field. For example, if they have to fulfill a project that requires a certain type of coding language, and they have no one on their permanent staff with that knowledge, staff augmentation is the way to go. If they don’t have an expert in the field already, there may be a good reason for it. More often than not, the reason is that they don’t need that language most of the time. So paying for an expert full-time would be pointless.
• Experienced augmented staff is quick and efficient. When augmenting your staff, you’re likely using people who’ve done this sort of temporary job before. That means they’re experienced in rapidly and efficiently assessing the situation and getting to work.
• Can help you try out talent. For many companies, temporary staff augmentation provides the perfect “trial run” for a more permanent future employee.
• Can help you navigate demand fluctuations. It fulfills the increased demand, without posing a potential problem in your long-term management.

The Downsides

• Depending on the project, it may take time to get the temporary team up to speed with your company specifics. Some projects require a more in-depth knowledge of company history and internal strategies, and getting your new team up to speed can prove time-consuming.
• Only works for short-term projects. While the augmented staff is a great idea for a handful of months, if your project is longer than a year, you might need to change your augmented team, which can cause delays and drops in quality.
• There’s always the risk of sub-par work. You still need to pay close attention to who you’re hiring according to the outstaffing model, since external talent may not be as smooth and reliable as you’d like them to.

Many high-profile pundits from both the business and political arenas warn of the potential devastation of a second wave of coronavirus. But small business owners in America know that the effects of the first wave are far from over. Business owners also know firsthand that small businesses continue to bear the brunt of the pain inflicted by the pandemic.  

Bar and Restaurants

Entrepreneurs seeking business funding and financing for bars and restaurants know they face an uphill battle in even the best economic conditions. But nothing could have prepared these small business owners for the effects of a global pandemic.  

The National Restaurant Association reports the bar and restaurant industry lost $80 billion due to the coronavirus over March and April in 2020. By the end of the year, the loss tally reached $240 billion.  

Business experts estimate that as many as 40 percent of U.S. restaurants and bars closed their doors in 2020. This number includes hundreds of thousands of business owners unable to survive the effects of the pandemic. Unfortunately, many more crushed dreams are possible without appropriate federal aid for small business owners.  

A few tips that may help owners of small restaurants survive Covid-19 include:

• Adhering to social distancing protocols
• Expanding off-premise dining alternatives
• Redesigning the menu for online customers
• Switching to takeaway and delivery services
• Streamlining production.

Travel and Tourism

Small business owners that support themselves by facilitating customer experiences far away from home may experience more suffering than other entrepreneurs as the pandemic rages on.

According to the latest estimates, the travel industry losses were more than $500 billion by the first day of 2021. The total economic effect of lost business is more than a trillion dollars. Those numbers represent more significant losses than those experienced after the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.  

The outlook is even bleaker from a global perspective. More than 100 million people working in travel-related occupations are without work due to the pandemic. The global impact on the GDP is already near $3 trillion with no end in sight.

Live Entertainment

The ability to put on sporting events, conferences, and live musical performances have taken a significant hit since the onset of the pandemic.  

One group of analysts estimate the total loss in growth for the entertainment sector over the next half-decade could top $160 billion. The sports industry expects to lose more than $12 billion over the same period. These losses do not include the money lost by professional and college athletic programs.  

Analysts explain that even though restrictions are not as strict now as they were at the beginning of the pandemic, many live entertainment fans are slow to enjoy these activities. One poll completed in 2020 showed that nearly 75 percent of sports fans said they would not attend a live event until a vaccine was available.

Industry participants continue their struggle to find ways to deliver live entertainment to customers in a secure and trustworthy manner.

Mom and Pop Shops

Mom and pop shops are among some of the hardest-hit businesses by the ongoing public health crisis, with thousands of them shutting down without ever filing for bankruptcy. Since many of those small business didn’t have a cash cushion for an entire economic shutdown, many of them preferred closing down than taking on debt without anyone guaranteeing that things would go back to normal in the near future.

By contrast, big box stores and online e-commerce business are thriving during the pandemic, with people flocking to hypermarkets and big-name department stores like there is no tomorrow. Meanwhile, mom and pop shops lose their customers to big retailers and online platforms with no federal or state aid in sight. And since getting a lease to stay afloat or accessing rent relief is not an option for small businesses, no wonder many decide to quietly close shop.

Key Takeaway

The coronavirus pandemic has negatively impacted all business segments over the past year. But the effect has been disproportionately harsh for small entrepreneurs working in the live entertainment, restaurant, retail, and travel industries.

There is no doubt that things might one day return to normal for small business owners operating in these sectors. But unfortunately, many businesses will close their doors for good before the end of these trying economic times. Hopefully, small business owners who show creativity and leadership will enjoy a better chance of survival and may find themselves in a stronger position once the pandemic runs its course.