Hiring a bookkeeper is an excellent idea for most physiotherapy clinics. It can be challenging to balance your time between caring for your patients, managing your finances, and attending to administrative tasks.
Many clinic owners rely on year-end accountants to handle their books, but finding the right bookkeeper can offer more advantages. A bookkeeper will focus on the day-to-day record-keeping that your clinic requires. They can provide you with monthly financial statements that can help you oversee the clinic's financial health and ensure that you always have accurate and current numbers, giving good cash flow visibility.
Plus, having a separate bookkeeper and accountant will provide additional oversight on your books. This can be an excellent advantage for your clinic, giving you better financial management and keeping your vital numbers in order.
Here are some basic questions to ask before hiring a bookkeeper:
1. Do they have experience working with physiotherapy clinics?
When selecting a bookkeeper, you want to ensure they have experience working in the healthcare industry, specifically with physiotherapy clinics. A bookkeeper who has worked with other clinics will help you set up your chart of accounts for proper tracking. They will also be able to use your practice management software or EMR program to record your revenue, cost of sales, and insurance billings.
A good bookkeeper will keep your books current throughout the year and help you stay on top of your sales tax obligations. Consistent, streamlined bookkeeping will help you understand how your clinic is performing throughout the year, giving you insight into profit margins and will help you keep your staffing costs in check.
2. Should you hire in-house or outsource?
When selecting a bookkeeper, you have two main choices. You can hire an in-house bookkeeper or outsource your bookkeeping to a third-party firm.
However, in most cases, bookkeeping isn't a full-time role, so hiring someone to work in-house can be quite costly. You have to pay for their deductions and vacation pay, not to mention the time it takes to train and manage them.
Outsourcing to a bookkeeper from a professional bookkeeping firm is the best way to save money while getting the bookkeeping expertise you need to keep your books current. You just need to make sure that since they are remotely based, they are still easy to reach and accessible when you need their assistance.
3. Do they have payroll expertise?
Not every bookkeeper is trained in handling matters related to payroll. If this is something that your clinic requires, you need to make sure that the bookkeeper you choose is a certified payroll compliance practitioner.
If so, they will help you with timely and accurate direct deposit pay runs for full-time and part-time staff, as well as payments to your contractors. They can also help you with payroll deductions and the generation of T4 or ROEs.
Remember that a professional with formal training should handle payroll payroll to ensure they are up to date with the changing payroll legislation and can keep your practice compliant.
4. Are they experienced with technology?
Accounting and bookkeeping technologies are constantly changing and advancing. You want to make sure that you select a bookkeeper that is familiar with the latest accounting software. They will be best able to advise you on the programs and tools suitable for your particular practice and can help you install them and migrate your data.
The bookkeeper you hire should also be familiar with the Electronic Medical Records system or the practice management software you use to leverage the data for reporting purposes. A bookkeeper who understands these capabilities will quickly adapt their processes to take advantage of these integrations to minimize data entry and obtain better insights into your clinic's financial performance.
5. Do they have the capability to grow with your practice?
Many in-house or part-time bookkeepers cannot keep up with your business's growth. As a result, you will need to hire more staff to manage your growing bookkeeping needs, adding to the overall costs of running your business.
Ideally, you want your bookkeeper to be able to scale with your clinic. Suppose your practice increases its number of patients or you open a new location. In that case, your bookkeeper should be able to keep up with the changes in transaction volumes and provide you with reporting on the performance of each location.
Unlike in-house or part-time individual bookkeepers, outsourced bookkeeping teams can scale alongside your company as they have more staff. You can also avoid paying for staff deductions, benefits, and other expenses while getting the bookkeeping support you need.
Hiring a bookkeeper will go a long way toward giving you more clarity regarding your financial data and will place the tedious task of bookkeeping into the most capable hands.
If you are considering outsourcing your bookkeeping or would like more information on how an outsourced bookkeeping team can help your physiotherapy clinic, contact Enkel today. Our team of professionals can help keep your books in order, scale alongside your business and ensure that you are always ready when tax time comes along.
