Most small businesses and many individuals have a tax accountant to help them file quarterly estimated taxes and annual tax returns. But not every business needs bookkeeping services. As a company grows, they’ll find they need bookkeeping functions, which a tax accountant is not trained or prepared to handle.
What’s the difference?
A tax accounting, or tax preparer, is not, by definition, a CPA (Certified Public Accountant) or a CB (Certified Bookkeeper). In fact, some training to become a tax preparer may involve nothing more than a course that lasts a few weeks in the evenings. Some tax accountants are CPAs—you can expect to pay a lot more for their services.
Tax accountants and tax preparers are experts in tax law and understand the “red flags” that may bring your company an IRS audit. But they are not experts in daily bookkeeping functions, including:
- Payroll
- Credit card statement reconciliation
- Bank statement reconciliation
- Expense reports
- Balance sheets
- Cash flow statements
- All the other daily, weekly, and monthly bookkeeping functions
In addition, they may not be trained in QuickBooks or any accounting software.
Leave Bookkeeping Functions to a Bookkeeper
Your full-charge bookkeeper from AccountingDepartment.com, is trained and certified in QuickBooks accounting software and is re-certified annually, understands how to follow GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles), and can manage all your daily, weekly, and monthly bookkeeping functions.
Your bookkeeper will work with your tax accountant to provide all the documents they need to file your quarterly and annual tax statements, but it’s important to understand that they are two very different professionals.
