Many small but mighty growing businesses battle with how to delegate financial tasks. What access should you give to your employees? For most business owners to let go and trust someone else with managing their confidential books, the decision is tough. Not only could your time be spent more wisely, but what about leveraging your employee’s strengths and value appropriately? And what checks and balances do you have in place to ensure you are still in the loop when delegating certain administrative steps in the cash flow cycle?
If you currently have an office manager handling your bookkeeping, ask yourself these questions.
Confidential Information:
- How many employees are you permitting to view confidential information?
- How do those employees access the information? Think shared files (unlocked drawers), software, computers, paper trails, etc.
- What controls do you have in place to limit this access?
Salaries & Wages:
- Do you really want your office manager to know how much you are paying yourself?
- Are you comfortable letting them see what you are paying other staff members?
Experience:
- What bookkeeping qualifications does your office manager bring?
- How much expertise does your employee have with accounting or Quickbooks?
- How well does your office manager know your business’s products & services?
Remember: Even small mistakes made repeatedly, year after year become big problems eventually and are expensive to fix.
Cross-Training:
- What happens when your office manager is sick, on vacation or at capacity with other work and projects that are equally important to your business?
- Or worse, what happens when your office manager resigns?
Security:
- What checks & balances are in place to make sure access to your cash and accounts are decentralized? One way to combat fraud is by dividing duties.
We Recommend: Having your office manager prepare your invoices and your outside bookkeeper pay the bills and reconcile the bank accounts.
Delegating bookkeeping to anyone takes thoughtful consideration. I am Kathy Dise from BudgetEase, with thoughts to Making YOU Profitable. If you have any questions e-mail me at kathy@budgetease.biz.
