When your business needs a bookkeeping specialist
Your answers point to something I do not do. Here is what you are actually looking for, and how to tell whether you have found it.
Something you said points outside the work I take on. Usually that means inventory tracked in your books, sales tax you want handled for you, selling physical products through an online cart, or invoicing by job with materials and labor attached to it.
I want to be straight with you about why that is a no and not a maybe.
It is not a knowledge gap. I have done inventory, sales tax, and job costing, and I know what that work takes.
What I have come to understand about myself is that it is not the work I am meant to be doing. What I love is sitting with what your numbers are telling you and working out together what happens next. Tracking units, valuing stock, keeping sales tax current in every state where you owe it: that is careful, skilled work, and somewhere out there is a person who finds it genuinely satisfying. I am not that person, and I stopped trying to be one a while ago.
It should be somebody's favorite thing. It is not mine.
I am telling you that clearly because a softer answer would leave you wondering whether I might make an exception, and I would rather you not spend a week hoping. I do not take this work on case by case, and I do not make exceptions for people I like.
It also matters more than it might sound like it should. Detailed work done by someone who chose it comes out different from the same work done by someone capable but reluctant. You would feel that difference within a few months, even if you could not quite name it.
None of this means your business is too complicated. It means it deserves somebody whose whole attention is pointed at it, and mine is pointed somewhere else on purpose.
What to ask before you hire anyone
The hard part is not finding a bookkeeper. It is telling whether the one sitting in front of you has done your kind of work before. These questions surface that, and you do not need to know any accounting to ask them.
- Ask them to describe the last client they had who made money the way you do. Not similar in size. Similar in how the revenue actually arrives. A specific answer is a good sign, and a vague one is also an answer.
- Ask how they handle the particular thing that makes your business different. The stock sitting in a back room, or the platform that pays you in batches with its fees already taken out, or the jobs where materials and labor land on one invoice. You do not need to know the right answer. You need to hear that they already have a practiced one, because the same word can mean two different jobs. Inventory on a shelf and inventory sold through a marketplace are not handled the same way, and someone who has only done one will tell you so if you ask directly.
- Ask whether reconciliation covers every balance sheet account or only the bank feed. Those are not the same thing, and most people do not know there is a difference until it costs them.
- Ask them to walk you through one report out loud before you hire them. If you come out of that conversation more confused than you went in, that is worth paying attention to.
- Ask how often they are actually in your file. Weekly and monthly are both legitimate services, but they are different services, and you should know which one you are buying.
- Ask whether they file your returns or hand off to a CPA, and who is watching the deadlines. Either arrangement can work. Not knowing which one you have is where the trouble starts.
The third one is the question I would never skip. I have opened files where a bookkeeper reported reconciliations as done for sixteen straight months, and what had actually been happening was the bank feed getting cleared. The cleanup ran $4,500. The owner had spent that whole year making decisions on numbers that were not real, which was the more expensive part.
You do not need to become an accountant to ask these six questions. You just need to know they exist.
Common questions
Do I need a specialist bookkeeper?
Not everybody does, and it depends less on how big your business is than on how the money arrives. If you do work, send an invoice, and get paid, most competent bookkeepers can handle your file. If there is stock to value, sales tax to keep current in more than one state, or jobs where materials and labor land on the same invoice, you want somebody who does that particular work every week rather than once in a while.
Why will some bookkeepers not work with inventory businesses?
Usually not because they cannot. Inventory work is detailed and ongoing, and it feeds your cost of goods sold, which feeds your tax return, so it needs somebody who stays current with it rather than piecing it together later. A lot of bookkeepers have simply chosen a different specialty, the way I have. It is worth taking that answer at face value rather than reading it as a comment on your business.
Is ecommerce bookkeeping different from regular bookkeeping?
Yes, and more than most people expect. A marketplace or platform tends to pay you in batches with its fees already taken out, sometimes weeks after the sale, sometimes with returns and chargebacks netted into the same deposit. Turning that back into revenue, fees, and refunds is its own skill. Someone whose experience is inventory sitting on a shelf in a shop has not done this. It is worth asking which of the two they have actually done.
Do bookkeepers file sales tax returns?
Some do, some do not, and some will file in one state but not in others. It is not a standard part of bookkeeping, which is exactly why it is worth asking rather than assuming. The same goes for income tax returns, which usually belong to a CPA or an enrolled agent rather than a bookkeeper. Whoever you hire, get clear early about who is watching which deadlines.
What is still open to you
Journey Pathway is free, and it is not limited by what kind of business you run. The full workshop library, the Reading Room, and the practice of understanding your own numbers well enough to ask a specialist sharper questions. All of that applies to you exactly as much as it applies to anyone else.
Knowing what you need is most of the work. Now you know what to ask for.