No matter how effective you are at handing your personal finances and tax returns, your business’s financial needs are an entirely different matter. Not only do business finances tend to be significantly more complex, but you also have very specific requirements you must meet for both your bookkeeping and your tax returns. We’ve already discussed why you should have professional accounting services for your government contracting business; now, let’s talk about why you should have the same professional handling both your books and your business taxes.
Improved Data Security
Any time information is passed from you to an accountant, there’s the risk of that data being lost, corrupted, or stolen. Whether you’re sending your information by email, fax, snail mail, or even a secure client portal, data in transit is always at higher risk of theft than data in storage. So, naturally, the more times you pass around your business’s sensitive financial data, the more opportunities hackers will have to steal that information.
When you have multiple accountants, you’ll have to send the same information out multiple times, creating those opportunities for data theft. But if you use the same accountant for both your bookkeeping and your tax preparation, you’ll reduce the number of times you need to submit that financial information, making it less likely that your documents will be intercepted.
At Peter Witts CPA, we utilize secure data sharing and encryption to help minimize any risk to your information, and can work with you to maintain your business’s books as well as prepare your tax returns each year.
Consistency and Accuracy
As we mentioned earlier, your business has to follow specific legal requirements regarding the accuracy of your books and your tax returns. Any inconsistencies—especially when comparing the two—can have serious consequences for your company. This is especially true for government contractors; inaccurate financial records can often come up in a DCAA audit, and may result in you losing out on a profitable contract for your company.
When you have multiple channels of communication open with different accountants who need the same information, you open up more possibilities for errors and inconsistencies. For example, let’s say that your tax preparer requests a copy of your business’s books at the beginning of the year so that they can begin preparing your return. A short time later, your bookkeeper adds in a few expenses that were missed from the end of December; but these expenses aren’t passed on to your accountant.
When your tax accountant sends you the return for your review, you might notice the discrepancies between the return and your books. Then again, you might not. Either way, these differences between your books and your taxes can have consequences for your business.
Saving Your Business Money
What are those consequences of inconsistencies? Generally speaking, they’re going to cost your business money. Let’s say that you do happen to notice the missing expenses on your return. You’ll send the return back to your accountant with a list of the updated expenses, and they’ll redo your taxes—but you’ll have to pay for the extra time they spend on it.
If you don’t notice those discrepancies, you’ll approve your inaccurate return and submit it to the IRS. This means you’re missing you’ll be missing out on deductions and paying more in taxes—again, taking money out of your own pockets.
When you have the same accountant for both your taxes and your bookkeeping, you only have one person handling all of that financial information. We’ll be able to prepare your return more quickly and easily based off of the books we’re already keeping for you. You don’t have to worry about ensuring multiple accountants have matching financial data, and your taxes get done faster, because we don’t have to request the books from your business’s bookkeeper.
Less Work for You
As a business owner, you know that duplicate work saps productivity. Typically, this concern is focused on ensuring your employees aren’t performing duplicate tasks; but it’s just as important (if not more so) to ensure that you aren’t doing the same tasks again and again, wasting your valuable time. When you have separate accountants, you’re creating unnecessary duplicate work for yourself.
With two accountants, you’ll find yourself sending many of the same financial documents over to each of them, and even sometimes playing the middleman to pass information between them. You’ll feel like you’re having the same conversations over and over again, because you’ll have to talk about many of the same things with both of them. By having a single accountant, you eliminate that duplicate work and save yourself a lot of time and effort.
At Peter Witts CPA, we’re equipped to handle your business’s bookkeeping needs, as well as being qualified to prepare and file your tax returns—both personal and business—every year. Contact us today to learn how using our services for all of your business’s accounting needs can benefit you.