Accountants offer a wide range of benefits for individuals, freelancers, landlords, small business owners, and others. When you hire an accountant for tax preparation services, tax planning, or bookkeeping, you receive quality assistance with your business and personal income and help with your tax prep and planning. Depending on your situation, here are just a few of the most prominent reasons to hire an accountant.

1. Save Time

Whether you run your own business, own rental properties, have a farm, or juggle work and family life, your time is precious. Doing your own tax prep or bookkeeping can be incredibly time consuming, and it can take you away from other business tasks and disrupt your work-life balance.

To estimate the value of an accountant, think about how much you expect to earn an hour and multiply that by the time you spend on accounting. The result is just the beginning of how much money you can save.

2. Reduce Your Tax Burden

Accountants understand the tax code inside and out. They stay constantly updated on changes to tax laws and regulations, and their knowledge helps to reduce your tax burden. When you hire an accountant, they make sure that you claim all relevant tax deductions and credits, helping to reduce your tax liability and put more money in your pocket in the long run.

They can also help you identify key tax issues at the beginning of the year or over a long-term basis. Then, you can use that knowledge to make financial decisions that have a positive impact on your income tax, corporate tax, or estate tax liability.

3. Get Help with Business Bookkeeping

In addition to tax preparation and planning services, accountants also offer help with business bookkeeping services. When you’re managing personnel, dealing with sales, and handling countless other business tasks, you may not have the time to adequately handle your bookkeeping. As a result, you may forget to record expenses or revenue which can lead to time-consuming hurdles at tax time.

Beyond that, an accountant can also use your bookkeeping records to generate a variety of reports so you can see your business growth on paper and identify areas for change or improvement. When you hire an accountant, they can create reports on everything from profit margins, to return on investment projections, to the ratio of salary and profit and more. They can also help you generate reports to provide to business lenders or investors when you’re looking for funding.

4. Avoid Errors

Unfortunately, manual accounting can be error prone. Mistakes can pop up when you’re keying in business revenue or expenses, reconciling bank statements, handling payroll, or doing other accounting tasks. A professional accountant helps to minimize errors, which is beneficial at all times but in particular if you face an audit.

5. Use Accounting Software More Effectively

With the rise of accounting software, many entrepreneurs and individuals are doing their own bookkeeping, but a lot of accounting software can be complicated to use. When you hire an accountant who provides QuickBook services, they can help you use the software more effectively. They can customize the software to work in the most advantageous way possible for your business or industry, and they can answer your questions along the way.

When you’re ready to hire an accountant, contact us today. At Scott Boyar, CPA, we offer tax preparation services and tax planning for individuals and business owners. We also have QuickBook ProAdvisors on staff to help with all your QuickBooks needs.