14.08.2023
It’s an unavoidable question if you work for yourself. Some entrepreneurs wonder whether to do the work themselves for reasons of cost. Others are happy to outsource time-consuming accounting work and leave it to a professional. But what are the pros and cons of outsourcing accounting?
Whether you’re just starting your own business or have been running your own company for a while: accounting tasks will always keep you busy. For some, the task is a recurring necessary evil that can take up a lot of time. Since not everyone is well versed in financial bookkeeping and accounting, many consider outsourcing these tasks. We have looked at when that might make sense.
For reasons of cost, the self-employed in particular often consider managing their income and expenses for themselves at first. If you also want to avoid outsourcing your bookkeeping, you can rely on software. There are many programs that you can buy or rent. Depending on the software, you can create and manage cash based accounting or double-entry bookkeeping. Some programs include additional functions – for example in the area of accounting – and can be used to create invoices or reminders. If you have little or no previous knowledge, you should make sure you choose a program that can check the data you entered and point out any errors.
Another advantage of software is that the providers offer regular updates and guarantee that the program is always up to date. The software price will depend, among other things, on the functions it includes. Inexpensive programs can be found at around CHF 100 per year, more comprehensive ones can cost up to CHF 400. You can often choose between different packages from a single provider.
If it’s important to you to be able to access your data from multiple computers or when you’re on the go, you should look at cloud solutions as an alternative to software. The costs for this can sometimes be even cheaper than buying software: some providers even offer free accounts, while other offers start at 5 francs a month. However, you should check for certificates from the providers that confirm that data protection guidelines are observed.
Outsourcing means delegating one or more business activities to external service providers. In the case of outsourced accounting, for example, you can hire a tax consultant. The main advantage of a mandate of this kind is that you can not only have your accounting taken care of, but other tasks besides, such as preparing VAT declarations or annual financial statements. That is also the difference compared to an accounting office, which is not allowed to advise or represent its customers in the area of taxes.
Whether you opt to do your own accounting or outsource it is, among other things, a question of cost. If you do it yourself, you save money and maintain an overview of your own finances. It can be useful, especially for the self-employed with no previous expertise, to acquire the required specialist knowledge in the area of financial accounting. This requires a significant time investment, however. This can be a disadvantage in the start-up phase, when you have to deal with a lot of bureaucracy and have much to learn in many different areas of business.
Many retailers therefore opt for a software or cloud-based solution. These can also often be linked to other digital offers – such as the e-banking platform from PostFinance and The link will open in a new window with software solutions from our partners. This allows payments transactions to be automated and synchronized smartly with the accounting software. Meanwhile, the Checkout Flex payment solution also displays sales reports for your various partners in consolidated form in the back office tool. As a retailer, you can then export this as a CSV file and easily import it into your accounting software.
