At networking events contractors have asked me about the risks of someone working in an undisclosed location handling their construction bookkeeping records.

Virtual Bookkeepers

I explain it this way virtual assistants can be a real asset to any business owner because they can handle a variety of mundane tasks better, faster than most business owners can. The time saved can be used to do things only the business owner can do. In short, do the $50 to $100 an hour work and outsourcing the $15 to $25 an hour work to a virtual assistant makes sense. In the end everyone makes more money and gets more enjoyment because they are doing what they love to do!

However, do not outsource important construction accounting services to a "virtual bookkeeper" because that is in my opinion foolish. The reason is simple; a virtual bookkeeper is usually a Bad Bookkeeper which is someone with enough skill to bluff their way into a construction accounting job but without the skillsets to keep it.

So what happens is they take a few online courses or attend a weekend seminar, setup a desk in their home and all of a sudden they are a low overhead, low price, virtual bookkeeper wrecking ball looking for a contractor to test out their new found skills on. Hiring one is like turning an apprentice loose on a job site with a set of plans and some power tools!

Since you have all your eggs in one basket and nobody to oversee that one bookkeeper you hope they never get sick, take a vacation, get distracted, get overloaded with clients or simply pass away. Because when, not if, any one of those things happen your contractors bookkeeping services needs will be way down the list of what is important.

In addition, most virtual bookkeepers operate in a vacuum; nobody to talk too, nowhere other than help screens for support and no incentive for continuing education. In most cases their ten years of experience is six months training repeated twenty times.

This is my opinion from reviewing hundreds of offers to subcontract to "Virtual Bookkeepers" on a regular basis. In all the interviews we have conducted sometime during the conversation most of the "Virtual Bookkeepers" relate stories to demonstrate how the "stupid contractors" they worked for went "bankrupt". I suspect part of it was due to the actions to the virtual bookkeeper.

newbie virtual bookkeepers give out their home address until they get a few angry contractors stopping by to express dissatisfaction about the condition of their QuickBooks Contractors financial reports anytime of the day or night. After a while they get a P.O. Box or a "Virtual Office" or the economy picks up and they get hired by a desperate contractor.

At the extreme end is the super-duper bargain basement, lower than low priced "virtual bookkeepers" working overseas in unfriendly environments with little or no skill in bookkeeping or accounting let alone construction accounting which is a whole different skill set.

The worst thing a contractor can do is enable a virtual bookkeeper remote access to their desktop computers, servers or other web enabled devices to have free unrestricted access to your company software and financial documents. See Bookkeeper Theft And Ways To Avoid It

The virtual bookkeeper can sign onto your company’s secure network from their home computer and accesses any documents just as they would if logged onto an on-site company computer and in many cases introduce viruses and wipe out many years' worth of work in QuickBooks and other sensitive data.

Outsourced Contractor Bookkeeping Services Providers

On the other side are the Outsourced Contractor Bookkeeping Services Providers like us. We work in a real office building with public access and normal business hours. We hire professional construction accountants and bookkeepers and have a comprehensive Construction Accounting System.

Outsourced Contractor Bookkeeping Services like ours do not rely on in-house servers; or your servers, instead we contract with an Intuit Approved Commercial Hosting company. What that means is Intuit the parent company of QuickBooks has set high standards and rigid requirements for any company wanting to host QuickBooks files. This gives contractors a layer of protection not available in privately held servers because everything is backed up and QuickBooks for Contractors software patches are installed automatically.

Very early in our search for a place to host, store, backup and maintain our own QuickBooks client files we "test drove" a lot of QuickBooks hosting providers before Intuit put their commercial Hosting Program in place and found most of them were offended when we asked detailed questions regarding safety, security and QuickBooks for Contractor backup procedures. In more than one case they hung up the phone and removed our access.

We have since found what we consider to be the best of the best Intuit Commercial Hosting Provider and we have our own private server. It is not cheap; however, quality is like oats...fresh clean oats cost more than oats that have been through the horse and we know What Ten Minutes Waste Costs.

Outsourced Contractor Bookkeeping Services have more than one person in the office so you do not have all your eggs in one basket. There are processes in place for checking and verifying the work. When a construction bookkeeper gets, take a vacation, get distracted, get overloaded with clients or simply passes away there is someone else to fill in because everyone is cross trained on everyone else's job wherever possible.

Work flow processes and job descriptions are documented in operations manuals so that when a new hire joins the firm they learn from videos, manuals and audio recordings. Not the old worn out method of following someone around and learning by watching. This means you get what you expect and read about in our Welcome Manual, very predictable, no surprises.

Qualified Outsourced Contractor Bookkeeping Services have specialists and for internal support for staff to talk with and get questions answered. We also provide continuing education. In most cases our staff ten years of experience really is ten years' experience.

Reduced Employee Costs