With cloud-based bookkeeping, who actually manages your finances?

There are countless businesses and organizations across Canada leveraging some form of cloud-based bookkeeping solution. It allows them to input transactions, oversee expenses, and overall access their financial data securely from any device with an internet connection.

Oftentimes, these types of solutions are created and maintained with the help of a third-party advisor, who specializes in accounting and bookkeeping. MNP’s ease Bookkeeping and Cloud Accounting is just one example. With this type of arrangement, it’s understandable to wonder as a business owner: What’s the division of labour? What are my team and I responsible for, and what is my advisor responsible for?

The purpose of this collaboration between you and your third-party bookkeeping advisor is ultimately to enable all parties to focus on what they do best, which leads to efficiency and peace of mind.

What your team does

It’s important to note that cloud-based bookkeeping, when provided as a service, includes both a technology piece and an advisory piece.

You and your team are primarily responsible for uploading day-to-day transaction data and financial activities. The technology piece helps you do this far more easily, for example enabling you to automate certain tasks or upload an entire receipt by taking a picture.

Ease is designed to help you and your staff become more aware of how your business runs, its performance, cash flow, and more. The consistency of uploading this financial information, paired with dashboards that allow you to easily view the information as it updates in real time, is a key part of that process.

Ideally, you should be making time to meet with your accountant/bookkeeping advisor at least quarterly, perhaps even monthly. They helped set up your cloud-based system, they know the technology, and can answer your questions. If you only meet them once a year, then there is little between them and a run-of-the-mill accountant who only does your year-end financial preparations and documents.

What your advisor does

The relationship between you and your bookkeeping advisor isn’t transactional, it’s collaborative. Your advisor is the one who takes care of more big-picture items such as financial performance, forecasting and modeling, and tax preparation and advice.

While your team uploads most or all of the data, your advisor’s main role is to handle the data processing and, in most cases, the legwork of bookkeeping. That includes reconciling your accounts, knowing when funds will enter or leave your accounts, and flagging any inconsistencies or areas where you’re not compliant.

All parties have access to view the information, including you and your staff, but the value your advisor adds is in knowing the story that data is telling. They’re the most qualified to get information in and out of the system, and provide a recent and accurate picture of your business’s performance.

Your advisor doesn’t just provide reports and feed your own data back to you — they’re available to talk to you about it and answer your questions as needed. Because they spend so much time analyzing your finances, they understand what you’re going through and can have more relevant conversations more quickly, so you can make the right decisions for your business in a timely fashion. Sometimes you just need a sounding board who is objective and brings accounting experience you may not have in-house. Your advisor can be that for you.

Why it’s set up this way

This type of collaborative effort yields the best results by letting everyone focus on what they’re good at. Chances are you didn’t become a business owner because you love looking at spreadsheets, you did it because you’re passionate and you have the skills to provide something that adds value to the world.

You also get agility and peace of mind through this arrangement. As you build trust with your advisor and confidence your data is accurate, you can make the right decisions to propel you towards your business goals. They’re designed to scale with you, meaning if your business increases in size or complexity, they can add resources to match what you need.

You also get peace of mind in terms of staffing, in that you don’t have to worry as much about hiring and training an internal person or team to manage your books, and what you would do if they left. Your advisor would create built-in redundancies; even if they were to leave, they would mentor their replacement, so you always have someone intimately familiar with your business working behind the scenes.

Getting started with ease

MNP’s ease Bookkeeping service is designed to provide you with all the benefits of working alongside an advisor, supported by leading cloud-based technology. Armed with both the tools and the knowledge, our ease clients often gain more peace of mind, new efficiencies, and more of their time freed up for what they want to be doing.