Accounting Services: How to Reduce Costs

Always hand over complete, nicely prepared, and sorted documents to the accountant at once. This can be once a week, month, quarter, or year. Depending on the size of the company and the allocation of tasks between the accountant and the company, there may be many or few documents.

All documents that reach the accountant unsorted must first be sorted. This can increase processing time by 25% or more.

For each document that is missing, the accountant must first check whether the document is really missing. To do this, he has to go through the existing documents again and then consider what the effects could be and decide whether to pursue on getting the document. This quickly causes 10 to 30 minutes of work for a single document - even for a document that would have been posted in 5 minutes.

Deliver all documents to the accountant at once. So he or she only has to open once a mail, email or Dropbox item instead of often.

The importance of this tip cannot be overstated.

Ask your accountant what is most efficient for him or her.

Dealing with paper is extremely time-consuming. Therefore, send the accountant the documents electronically.

The electronic delivery of documents should be done as PDF files.

Buy a fast scanner. The scanner then probably creates image files or PDFs. Image files should be converted into PDFs using an additional program. There should be a PDF file at the end with one or more pages for each document. Better scanners can also create multi-page PDFs directly for a document that consists of several pages.

An alternative to a scanner is an app on the smartphone that can create PDFs from the camera.

Avoid sending image files (JPG, BMP, etc.) to the accountant as dealing with them on a PC is very cumbersome and time-consuming.

Of course, the PDFs should be sent to the accountant in a nicely sorted manner (see previous chapter).

The following options are available for transmission to the accountant: e-mail or uploading to a cloud storage device (e.g. Dropbox).

The accountant then takes care of everything that follows.

What happens with the scanned paper documents must be decided together with the accountant. You are legally on the safe side if you continue to store the documents in paper form, even if you will realistically never need these paper documents again. A simple box per year is sufficient for storage. Beautiful and sorted folders are no longer necessary because the documents have been scanned and you or the accountant have an electronic filing system for them.

Is your accountant not yet working digitally with you? Then take the initiative and discuss it with him. When including the German articles, this website contains everything your accountant needs to know in order to start digitally with you using the simplest possible means.

In case you are interested yourself (currently only in German):

• Buchhaltungsservice: Kosteneinsparung durch digitale Belegszustellung
• Beste Ordnerstruktur für die digitale Ablage in der Buchhaltung
• Digitale Buchhaltung und einfachste gesetzeskonforme Ablage (Schweiz)

Different divisions of tasks between a company and the accountant are conceivable. It is most efficient for the accountant if he never has to look at the documents at all. The filing is then done by the company itself. In certain cases, this is very possible. It works like this:

Vendor Invoices (Accounts Payable)

The company can pay the vendor invoices (cost invoices) itself from the bank. In the online banking, you can enter your own additional information text for each transfer, which is then visible on the bank account statements. The accountant then enters the expense in the accounting software using these bank account statements without ever having to see the original invoice. It must be agreed with the accountant what exactly needs to be written in these info texts (e.g. expense description, relevant period, VAT amount).

If the accounting software supports the reading in of electronic bank statements, posting with this system becomes particularly efficient. The accountant then only needs about 30 seconds for posting an entry instead of e.g. 4 minutes for a paper document including subsequent filing of the paper document.

The accounting program Bexio, for example, supports the importing of electronic bank statements and has very good functionality for efficient posting.

Customer Invoices (Accounts Receivable)

Similar to the accounts payable, the accountant can also book accounts receivable book from a bank statement. There is no need for any additional information, since almost all incoming cash is from customers and can hence be posted into income. The few incoming cash movements that are not income can easily be identified by the accountant based on the sender of the money (e.g. incoming cash from Helvetia Insurance is likely to be a repayment of an insurance premium in a normal company and not income from a customer).

At the end of the year, the company must inform the accountant how many customer invoices are still unpaid so that the accountant can post a corresponding correction in one entry covering the total amount.

In the customer invoice process just described, the customer must check for himself which invoices have already been paid. If this payment control is to be carried out by the accountant, he still does not have to be receive the invoices in paper. An Excel list with the relevant information about the invoices would suffice and be more efficient (cf. the following chapter on Excel list).

With many accounting systems, the client company can post bookings directly itself. The external accountant then has more of a control function and posts less himself. This saves time for the accountant.

This is possible with the Bexio online accounting system, and the Abacus accounting program also has access options for accounting customers. Many other accounting programs also have corresponding functionalities.

The external accountant then only looks at the accounting monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually.

Depending on the situation, the customer does the bookkeeping alone during the year and the external accountant is only used for the annual financial statements. This is also possible with simple companies and simple self-employed people, where the business can basically be run on the bank account balance. As long as it is ensured that all debts are settled in a timely manner as they accrue and that they cannot build up unnoticed until the end of the year, up-to-date accounting is less important. For example, it is important to make monthly social security payments that are large enough to avoid a huge year-end bill.

Customer Invoices (Accounts Receivable)

There are two variants here for the company to post itself: Creation of the customer invoice directly in the accounting program or only posting it afterwards.

Accounting programs with a good invoicing feature can be a real asset for creating accounts receivable invoices. For example, Bexio has a great tool for creating invoices. Bexio immediately creates the entire invoice for the customer in an attractive design, with a payment slip and posts it at the same time.

As an alternative, the customer invoices can still be created with, for example, Microsoft Word and then only posted in the accounting program. Many accounting programs offer access for companies here. With detailed instructions prepared by the external accountant, ordinary secretarial staff should be able to post the invoices.

Vendor Invoices (Accounts Payable)

There are two different options for vendor invoices: posting and paying via the accounting program or only subsequent posting.

When posting with following payment, the vendor invoices are recorded in the accounting program. The accounting program then generates a payment file in a separate step. This payment file has to go to the bank somehow. The file is either uploaded to e-banking or the accounting program sends it directly to the bank in the background.

In the case of only subsequent posting, the invoice is posted in the accounting program after it has already been paid.

General Ledger

For most companies, the bulk of the accounting work is on accounts receivable and accounts payable. Depending on the company, there are also a few other postings, such as a cash book. Depending on the case, these bookings can also be booked directly by the company according to the instructions.

Or there are no subledgers for accounts receivable and accounts payable at all. The customer then books directly in the general ledger.

There is also the possibility that a company providing a list of transactions to the accountant. This can be a specially maintained Excel list. Or an export from another computer program that the company uses (export in Excel or CSV).

The accountant then posts manually based on the Excel list or imports the Excel into the accounting program using an interface.

In the variant with import, the list is then automatically posted, which generates meaningful time savings.

The automatic import usually requires some IT skills on the part of the accountant. Especially if the data in Excel has to be transformed before importing. This IT capability is usually not available in an accounting office. But with us it is.

In certain companies, it saves a lot of time if the accountant works with electronic bank statements. These bank statements in camt.053 format can be downloaded in e-banking. The file is then imported into the accounting program. The accounting program then displays all bank movements, together with functions for automatic or quick manual posting.

Alternatively, it is also possible to work with Excel and CSV bank statements. The bank transactions can then be processed in Excel and imported into the accounting program. The advantage of Excel is that more complex data transformations are possible compared to the standard functionality for importing bank statements in the accounting software. However, this requires IT skills on the part of the accountant, which are rarely available in a regular accounting office. But with us it is.

For certain companies and some self-employed people, up-to-date bookkeeping can be dispensed with. In some cases, it is sufficient if the bookkeeping is updated once a year.

This is more efficient as then everything can be processed at once, which is known to take less time than doing a little work on it often.

The yearly posting happens largely automatically with the help of electronic bank statements or prepared Excel lists, then the time saving is especially high.

However, this should only be done where the business can basically be run on the basis of the bank account balance.

It must be ensured that all debts can be settled and that the company does not end up in over-indebtedness unnoticed. Therefore, all debts (social security, etc.) should be paid in good time so that they do not build up unnoticed to the end of the year.

Never mix private with business. Never!

There is one bank account for business and one for personal use. Nothing is mixed. If an error occurs, it is made up for with a correction payment from one account to the other.

There is a separate credit card for business. Nothing is mixed with private.

Accounting for expenses can be a real time waster that drives up the price of accounting services.

The problem with expenses is that they're a lot of small amounts. And posting a small amount takes about as long as posting a large amount.

Possible Solutions for Cash-Paid Expenses

• Summarize many small, similar receipts and use them to create a summary receipt. In this way, the accountant only has to make one entry and does not have to add it up himself.
• Stick the original receipts to each of these summary receipts. This prevents you from incorrectly counting the same original document on more than one summary document. If an accountant finds a duplicate, at some point he will begin to exercise duplicate checking tasks, which uses time and leads to a higher price for the accounting service.
• Pay back these summary expense receipts via bank transfer to yourself and enter the relevant information in the bank transfer text (e.g. expenses for fuel, Dec.22, total CHF 187.8, total VAT included CHF 6.30), so that the accountant can post it without having to ever view your paper receipt (similar to Chapter 3 and the vendor invoices).

Possible Solutions for Card-Paid Expenses

• In connection with the importing of electronic bank statements, the accountant can see exactly who the payment was made to, on which date, and at what time. What additional information he needs depends heavily on the individual situation of the company. It is also conceivable, for example, to have two different bank cards for different types of expenses, so that the accountant can see what type of expenses are involved based on which bank card is shown to be used on the bank statement. It is also conceivable for a company that is subject to VAT to calculate the VAT on a separate Excel table for all expense receipts for the month and then post it once a month as a total instead of with each receipt.

Petty Expenses of Owners

In the case of small expenses from company owners, these are ideally added up and then sent to the accountant as a total. If the owner does not want to make this effort, it should be considered whether he should pay all these small expenses from his private assets and forgo reimbursement. For everything under approx. CHF 20, the separate booking is more expensive than the tax savings possible by booking it in business expenses. To a certain extent, flat-rate expenses can also be used.

Expense Tools

Some accounting programs have expense tools. This can be an app on the cell phone that the employees can use to photograph the expense receipts in the restaurant, or a website on which the expense receipts can be uploaded.

From the accountant's perspective, these expense tools are more efficient than receiving individual expense receipts in paper or PDF format. But a well-prepared Excel list for posting totals would be even more efficient for the accountant. However, since the creation of such an Excel list is extremely time-consuming for the customer, he or she will often not participate.

From the customer's point of view, the expense tools are very convenient. He or she can take a picture of the expense receipt with the app immediately after having paid it, enter some additional information, and that's it.

Both Abacus (AbaClik) ​​and Bexio (e.g. Yokoy) have expense tools and other accounting programs offer it as well.

Cash Book

If a cash book is kept, it should be done in Excel and all relevant information for a total entry should be calculated automatically (total per expense type and associated VAT amount).

For small amounts, it is sometimes not worthwhile to book them accurately from a cost-benefit point of view.

For example, if a shopping list totaling CHF 110 contains CHF 90 in fuel and CHF 20 in office supplies, it saves time for the accountant to simply post everything to the fuel account.

There are customers for whom the above example would be unacceptable. Criticism comes from other customers when it is divided.

Customers who are the sole owners of a company themselves usually don't have to be too specific. As long as the inaccuracies and errors have no tax implications, the tax authorities have no reason to complain. The situation is very different when the company belongs to other people. If a small accounting error is discovered, even if it has no financial impact, it can lead to a loss of trust. The entire bookkeeping can then be called into question and thus indirectly also the management, which is supposed to supervise the bookkeeping.

What kind of customer are you?

As a base rule, accountants and fiduciaries like to work very accurate.

It's more like telling them not to be more precise than necessary.

Some companies are doing better in some months and worse in others. In many companies, it evens out over a longer period of time. In many cases it is sufficient if the situation is assessed in detail on a quarterly, semi-annual, or even annual basis.

However, if such a company is deprived of all money that is not immediately needed as wages, dividends or loans, only a small financial safety cushion remains for bad months.

If a company could get into financial difficulties from one month to the next, the accounting must be done much more promptly and accurately so that problems would be recognized in time.

The law stipulates what has to be done as soon as a company threatens to run out of money and falls below certain financial thresholds. If these regulations are not complied with in a timely manner, the management, the board of directors, and possibly also the accountant risk becoming liable.

To prevent this from happening, important accounting work that is otherwise not done so often suddenly has to be done on a monthly basis. In addition, the work must also be carried out more accurately and be better documented. Examples of such work are:

• Estimating the risk of losses on outstanding customer invoices,
• account reconciliations whether everything was booked correctly,
• the assessment of the creditworthiness of loans given,
• etc.

This causes hectic and additional work.

If, on the other hand, a company has sufficient financial resources, a rough monthly or quarterly assessment of the situation is sufficient without the accounting having to be correct down to the last dollar, since there is a sufficiently large financial cushion for any inaccuracies in the accounting figures.

When having a large financial cushion, one also does not have to work too carefully when preparing the annual financial statements. Risk positions are then written down in the annual financial statements according to the principle of prudence without spending hours analyzing and discussing. However, if the financial cushion is non-existent and the company would fall below an important capitalization threshold as a result of a write-down, then the matter must be examined and discussed very carefully.

Depending on the company, the savings can be so great that the additional money left in the company is amortized within one to two years due to the lower accounting costs.

If you are considering changing the accounting service provider to lower the price of your bookkeeping service, here are a few points to consider.

The tips are also helpful if you want to outsource bookkeeping for the first time.

Talking to the Existing Accountant

If the accounting services are too expensive, the existing accountant should be talked with first. The accountant can be asked what ways he sees to lower costs. He may be asked why he has to charge such a high bill. Depending on the case, the existing accountant maybe simply never took the initiative to show his clients how to make it easier for him.

Comparisons of Hourly Rates

When evaluating a new accountant, the first thing that is often considered it is the hourly rate. The prices for bookkeeping services vary in the range of CHF 100 - 300 per hour (excl. VAT). Prices below CHF 100 are very cheap and can usually only be found for completing simple paperwork.

However, the comparison based on hourly rates should be treated with caution.

If, as an example, an employee with an hourly rate of CHF 120 is compared with another employee at CHF 180, the first seems to be cheaper.

But what can speak for the accountant with the higher hourly rate:

• that he is more experienced or competent in dealing with the accounting program and various accounting topics. He doesn't type faster, but he chooses the better way of getting work done and organized from the start. So he might implement the tips from this article in cooperation with the customer and can save a lot of time. Hopefully, he also has to do less research, for example for legal issues. Taking these points into account, it is not certain that bill for the accounting services will be higher despite the higher costs per hour.
• In addition, the quality of the advice given by the employee with the higher hourly rate could be better, which can lead, for example, to cheaper tax bills due to a more favorable tax organization of the company or to other advantages in the company that more than compensate even for a higher bill for the accounting service. A more skilled accountant will also be more able to point out tax risks or even tax stupidities.

Taking everything into account, it cannot be said in general that the company will do better financially with the cheaper accountant. However, depending on the individual case, it is also possible that the cheaper employee is the better choice. Maybe the client gets lucky and the cheaper employee is even more skilled than the second. Ultimately, it depends on the individual case.

With simple bookkeeping, an hourly rate of CHF 300 would be a lot for the regular manual posting of receipts. Here the expensive accountant should delegate time-consuming and simpler tasks to a cheaper assistant or charge a cheaper hourly rate for simpler tasks.

Request Quotes

If a new accounting service provider is in discussion, then you can ask him for a price estimate.

If an accountant underestimates the costs, after a while he will approach you and want to renegotiate. To ensure that this does not happen and that the price estimate is realistic from the start, it is important that he has a good data basis to be able to estimate his effort.

The best thing to do is to send him the fully detailed statements for all accounting accounts from the previous year together with the balance sheet and income statement. That gives him a good starting point to ask you questions afterwards.

And then you discuss his estimate with him. And you can also ask what you can do, and what variants of task sharing there are, to make it cheaper.

Are you looking for a new accountant service? Contact us:

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