If you need help with financial processes and aren’t sure whether you need a Virtual Assistant or a Bookkeeper, here are some things to keep in mind when making a decision.
Firstly, there can be a lot of overlap and depending on your needs, it might be best to find a Bookkeeper AND a Virtual Assistant or a Virtual Assistant who is also a Bookkeeper or even a Bookkeeper who is happy to do a small amount of admin. The idea is to find what works for your business.
If you need help preparing your BAS, you do need to make sure whoever you hire is a registered BAS agent as that’s a legislative requirement. If you’re interested in finding out more, there are great articles here, here and here. There is also a search facility available where you can check that whoever you’ve hired to do your BAS is registered to do so. You can find that here.
If you (or your accountant) does all your tax preparation and you only need someone who can take care of accounts payable and accounts receivable doing things like data entry, invoicing your clients, chasing up outstanding debtors and the like, then you will probably find a Virtual Assistant that will do everything you need.
However, if your needs are more complicated and include payroll, superannuation and the like, a Bookkeeper will probably be more effective as it’s not an area you want to be making mistakes in. However a Virtual Assistant with experience in payroll may be sufficient depending on the size of your business and your individual needs.
As a quick guide, I’ve created this flowchart to help you decide which would be the most help with financial processes for your business if you’re considering outsourcing: A Virtual Assistant or a Bookkeeper
