As a clinic owner, your main focus is keeping your patients healthy, high-performing, and pain free. You shouldn’t have to spend your valuable time buried in bookkeeping and payroll activities. Not only are they time-consuming tasks, but they take you away from the patients who need your expertise, and the work you’re passionate about.
A simple, low-maintenance way to ensure your books get the attention they need is to outsource this task to a professional firm that specializes in back office functions. Not only will you get an experienced team of people working on your finances, but you’ll free yourself and your staff up to focus on core business activities.
Here are six reasons you should consider outsourcing your bookkeeping:
1. Save precious, higher-value time
Bookkeeping is a time-consuming activity, taking hours and hours that would be better spent generating revenue for the business, managing and nurturing staff, and growing your practice.
By outsourcing your bookkeeping, you won’t have to spend your time tracking and entering receipts, reviewing transactions, conducting bank reconciliations, and more. You’ll be able to focus more of your energy on your practice and will be able to make better decisions for your clinic.
When it comes to payroll, the tedious nature of getting everything perfect (and it really has to be), can be another big time suck. Hours spent dealing with timesheets, ensuring compliance, and running payroll is time you can never get back.
2. Lower your costs
By outsourcing your payroll and bookkeeping, you can save a significant amount of money for your clinic. When you don’t have to hire an in-house bookkeeper or payroll administrator, there are no additional costs for payroll deductions, CPP, EI, vacation time, and more.
There are a number of financial benefits that come with outsourcing your clinic’s bookkeeping and payroll, not the least of which is having a professional personally take care of your finances at a fraction of the cost of hiring someone full or part time.
3. Current, accurate books
When you outsource your bookkeeping, your books will be accurately kept up to date throughout the year. Outsourced bookkeeping firms handle tasks like:
- Entering invoices and expenses
- Cash sales reconciliation
- Vendor payments
- Bank and credit card reconciliations
- Providing financial statements
- Setting up your chart of accounts
- Accounts receivable collections
- Payroll and other accounting tasks
- Controllership services and strategic oversight
An outsourced bookkeeping firm can also ensure your revenue is recorded accurately, and when tax season rolls around, your books will be completely up-to-date. This makes it much easier for your accountant to get your taxes done on time, and without a lot of your time and input..
4. Cash flow visibility
An experienced bookkeeping team will provide you with much needed visibility on cash flow and clinic profitability. They’ll create monthly financial reports including balance sheets, cash flow statements, profit and loss statements, as well as Accounts Receivable aging reports to help you better manage collections (and they can do that too!).
Understanding cash flow is important. Clinics often need funds to purchase new equipment, expand existing space, or open additional facilities. On the flip side, when unexpected situations arise (like a global pandemic) you may need to reduce your costs in anticipation of a period of restricted cash flow. Outsourced bookkeeping professionals help keep track of your expenses so that you always know where your cash is going and can easily identify areas where you are overspending or can scale back.
Another plus from outsourced bookkeeping firms is that they keep track of insurance billing, keep your Accounts Receivables up to date, and allow you to see just how much is owed to you by insurance companies at any given time.
Finally, outsourced bookkeepers can create custom reports that track the profitability of new and recurring patients and measure the overall growth of your practice. If you have more than one practice, they can help track performance of each individual practice, allowing you to compare performance, discover best practices, and standardize across all of your clinics.
5. They grow as you do
As your clinic grows and you expand your patient base, there will be more invoices and insurance claims and balances to manage and follow-up with. While these tasks can be extremely time-consuming, they may not require a full-time employee, or may require 1.5 people.
When you outsource, you work with a team of professionals that can scale up or down to handle your extra workload without the cost of hiring full-time staff members. They grow with you as your business grows and even take on the bookkeeping work of new locations if/when you open them.
6. World-class technology is part of the package
Most outsourced bookkeeping firms use cloud-based accounting software including tools like QuickBooks Online, Dext, and Plooto. These help to streamline the bookkeeping processes and keep your documents stored safely in the cloud (say goodbye to clunky file cabinets or aging servers you can only access from the office). An outsourced bookkeeping team stays on top of the latest technology and tool advancements so that you don’t have to!
There’s a lot that goes into managing a clinic. You need to stay focused on finding new patients, delivering great service, and managing high performing teams. You’re good at what you do, and so are outsourced bookkeeping firms. If you’re looking to save time and money on your bookkeeping and payroll, outsourcing may be the perfect solution for you.
Enkel has a staff of trained bookkeeping professionals that can help you manage your clinic’s financial data and keep your books current. Contact us today to find out exactly how we can help you grow.