What Matters and What Doesnt in the Fight to Find the Best New York Bookkeepers
What matters in finding the best New York bookkeepers can be hard to determine, largely because every business is different and each person is going to be looking for different aspects that make them comfortable. Still, one aspect that all industry analysts can all agree is that finding bookkeepers that have relevant experience is important. What is relevant experience? If the business is a start-up, it’s very important to find a firm that specializes in the unique needs that neophyte businesses have. If they have that kind of experience and they have experience in a given industry, this is doubly good news and that can be enough to find a pool to select from. But this isn’t the only thing because when dealing with startups, it’s critical that there’s mutual respect and good understanding because there’s likely to be involvement and potentially a mentoring relationship that will exist between the two parties.
The problem is that too many bookkeepers that are qualified to help start-ups end up only focusing on large corporations because they tend to be more lucrative. Start-ups won’t get the time and advice they need and the firm won’t see the account as profitable enough and it becomes a low priority and that benefits no one. Those accountants have good knowledge, but they may not have the time or customer service focus to properly work with someone just creating a start up.
In these situations, a person setting up their first business will have many more issues and require more guidance than a more experienced customer who only needs an accountant to balance books and file paperwork. But a qualified company that takes the time to work and grow with the start-up can be rewarded when that company succeeds and becomes much larger.
Aside from these abstract issues, there’s a cold hard fact that all New York businesses and New York bookkeepers need to be aware of: These start-ups tend to have a lot of tax issues early on from both state and local. For a new business who has spent the past year working 16 hour days and 7 day weeks, the prospect of an audit is enough to cause a mental breakdown and this is where a good New York bookkeeper can avoid these problems and allow the entrepreneur to really focus on their major concerns. But the problem is that many accountants have differing specialties and picking one that may not have enough start-up experience or enough within a vertical and that is a recipe for disaster, be it early on or down the road.
Even among these experienced accountants, separating the ones that will save money from those that will end up costing a lot of money because of mistakes, is not easy. It can be extremely difficult to find the right experience and the right bedside manner. Not only does a prospective client need to ask the New York bookkeeper a lot of questions, but they need to ask themselves a lot of questions and rely on how much experience they have and how much help they think they’ll need.
