Bookkeeping

[Raggyiom]

Hi all

I own a small financial business with about 35 transactions (in and out) over a given month.

Presently we pay:

1. Book keeper £80pm
2. Xero £20pm

The bookkeeper basically:
- Reconciles 75% of our regular expenses
- She also manages our payroll

I still have to reconcile some income as she doesn't know where to allocate this (takes me about an hour a month).

Bookkeeper has asked that we start using 'Dext' for £27pm as that will save time and potentially her time/money regular coding invoices. If it saves an hour of her time then for £7 extra I'm not fussed however:

Q: Is this decent value for the tasks completed? What do you guys pay for bookkeeping?

[MaxFromage]

Impossible to say without knowing the details of your payroll. Weekly/monthly/number of employees etc.

[Raggyiom]

monthly payroll, 3 employees

[MaxFromage]

Outsourced payroll would be £30+ each month, so you're paying £50 for the bookkeeping. Depending on the work, that's 1-3 hours. Hard to say without seeing it. Either way, finding a decent bookkeeper is hard work, especially for a small job.

[wheelerc]

Xero does Payroll for £5 per month. Can you not reconcile 35 transactions in an hour by yourself? 1 per day...

Not sure why you need a bookkeeper at all?

[Ham_and_Jam]

Raggyiom said:

monthly payroll, 3 employees

15 mins a month to do yourself (probably even less with only 3 employees)

In fact it use to take me longer to send and receive the payroll info from our accountant before we brought it in house.

Lots of software on the market that is super simple to use.

[robdcfc]

I have both Xero and Dext via my Accountant for £28 a month.

You wont need a bookkeeper if you have those so it will work out far cheaper, I have around 50-60 purchase invoices and 30 or so sales invoices a month and its less than an hour altogether for everything to be input on Xero.

[Jordie Barretts sock]

wheelerc said:

Xero does Payroll for £5 per month. Can you not reconcile 35 transactions in an hour by yourself? 1 per day...

Not sure why you need a bookkeeper at all?

This. All day long.

You are already doing an hour an month, you could do it all in that hour.

[paulrockliffe]

The only reason I would outsource this is that running payroll to deadline so that your employees get paid is really important. If you want the flexibility to not have to think about it at the same time each month then it's maybe worth it. But last time I did payroll there was nothing simple on the market that would let you schedule payments, now online banking will let you schedule it, so if you have fixed salaries then even that is simple now.

I actually used HMRC's basic payroll software to do the one employee, who was also me, you put in a few numbers, it worked it all out and submitted. I don't think there's an equivalent these days, but I can't imagine third party stuff isn't better.

[Raggyiom]

Thanks all, useful.

If we had 3 times the transactions or it was hoovering up my time significantly it would be worth the expense.

I'll have a look at Xero payroll good shout.