If you are planning to establish a business and hire people, hiring an accountant can provide you a lot of advantages. He or she can help you organize and file your taxes, advice you if you want to buy a property, assist you with budgeting a project or simply do the bookkeeping for you. An accountant can practically help you with everything about your finances, even your personal assets. So how much does an accountant cost?
First, we shortly discuss what an accountant can do to help you as a business person.
Advantages of Hiring an Accountant
An accountant can be your most trusted person with regards to your financial resources and organization. He or she can be your advisor and analyst when it comes to handling your overall financial assets including liabilities.
According to Accounting Coach, the following are what your accountant can help you with:
- Assist you in preparing your organization or company’s financial statements like ledger maintenance and can also manage employees that are also involved in your business’s financial organization.
- Work on your business’s cost management system by analyzing all the costs that go through your business’s operations, product development and operational expenses.
- Can work with your internal auditor or CPA in your organization by assisting in auditing your firm’s financial statements as well as other body’s financial statements that are connected with your company.
- Guide you and provide you advice with regards to your financial scheme and can convert financial data into business information.
- Can be relied upon with regards to bookkeeping and finding the best business structure that you can add up to your business as he or she can determine if your capital is capable of handling the costs.
- Experienced accountants can reset your overall accounting system and even analyze and prepare your tax returns as well as advice you on how to avoid paying unnecessary taxes.
- Can assist you with your budgeting, manage your company’s internal cash flow, create strategies through inventories and other financial concerns that can positively influence your business’ growth and productivity.
Average Cost of an Accountant
Most companies want to keep their accountants if they want to maintain their finances secret. But there are business firms that only hire accountants when they need them.
Today, accountants and CPAs are largely for hire because getting hired instead of working for individual companies can provide them better financial gain and have more freedom to work for multiple companies simultaneously. Having their accounting firms, they can provide accounting services for the small businesses to the largest multinational corporations without any restrictions.
Let’s now discuss the usual accounting fees that accountants charge based on their work:
- According to Advisoryhq, an accountant whose tasked is to do bookkeeping for small businesses can charge by fixed-price agreement or per page or by the hour ranging from $125 to $150 an hour and this is for completing tax forms, data entry, producing financial reports and in learning the financial situations of these businesses. They may also be guided by software which the business organizations will provide.
- New accountants who will be hired to do bookkeeping may charge $25 to $50 an hour, but this also depends on the experience they have earned and the distance they must travel going to the company.
- Accountants who will do bookkeeping via email will charge $125 to $150 a month, and that’s only for basic accounting services. Most accountants agree to this because they don’t spend time and money for travel and they can also work with other companies for extra income.
- If you hire an accounting firm, you may also be faced with accounting fees that are different from off-site accountants. For example, you pay the company $70 up to $100 a year by just computing your tax. All you have to do is input your data on the accounting firm’s cost calculator, and the result will be sent to you via email, tax or through phone calls.
- In-house accountants who work as bookkeepers in the US have average annual earnings ranging from $30,000 to $39,898 while an account executive could earn $68,294 to $72,000 per year. Payroll managers do get around $57,600 annually, so these costs largely depend on the financial assets of the company.
- Investopedia also says that experienced accountants who do tax filing for businesses are paid an average price of $159 up to $273 annually depending on the location the company is settled. For additional services like in expediting return taxes, an extra $88 could be charged by the accountant.
The average cost of an accountant may also vary based on the company’s financial asset and the accountant’s portfolio. For instance, a small business firm that has around $500,000 capital will usually pay $160/hour to a high-profile accountant to organize the company’s financial tax obligations while a junior executive will get only $73 an hour for the same job.
For firms that earn around $10 million per year, they usually pay $312 per hour to their partner accountants while their associates only get $188 an hour.
Consider These Before Hiring An Accountant
Not so many employees have the expertise the accountants have that’s why business people who are new in their trade would like to know how much does an accountant cost. And for those who are getting overwhelmed with their company’s expenses they may also ask the same question.
Nevertheless, don’t expect that accountants follow standard rates because an individual accountant, as we have discussed, would have a different rate compared to an accountant that works for an accounting firm. Freelance accountants are also professionals, so they have their free will when choosing their rates. So what we have shown here are the actually estimates based on the surveys.
Rule of thumb here – when choosing an accountant, experience must be of significant consideration. Though a professional accountant will charge you higher than a newbie, the output you’ll get will worth the pay you gave out.
This is why it is imperative that before you hire an accountant shop for some accountants that have the best portfolio and have earned the reputation as honest individuals. Once you have your choices, interview each of them so that you’ll know and feel which among them can work with you with ease.
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