Hiring a Remote Staff Accountant/Bookkeeper

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#1
Posts:
100
Joined:
29-Nov-2017 8:05pm
Location:
Los Angeles
Hi guys,

My firm has reached the level where I need to take on a new staff accountant/bookkeeper. I was looking for any advice from you guys on what I need to look out for or any general tips.

I have a partner and we are both remote for the next few weeks/months due to Omicron. We have 3 employees in the office doing admin work but nothing related to accounting or bookkeeping. Is it reasonable to hire a part-time CPA to basically do bookkeeping, sales tax filings but no tax preparation? Would it be wise to utilize that person to do tax prep? My partner and I can pretty much handle the tax prep on our own, but having someone to do the bookkeeping would free up a lot of my time.

How do you manage their hours and know if the person isn't slacking off when remote? Where do I look at payrates for fully remote in SoCal? I was thinking $25 to $30 an hour around 35 hours a week with no overtime/busy season as a draw. My main concern is if I pay hourly knowing how many hours they actually worked. Also, do you just share all the QuickBooks files with the new hire? My idea was to send them the QuickBooks file via a separate Dropbox and have them work on it then send it back to my Dropbox. This seems cumbersome, but I don't want someone new to have full access to our internal office Dropbox.

Any tips for remote hires would be greatly appreciated. I already have a new laptop with Microsoft Teams for communication and QuickBooks ready for them. Lastly, I'd like to give them a laptop with no WIFI and a sample QuickBooks file to see how they do on downloading transactions, reconciling the account, and updating the monthly workpapers.
 

#2
smtcpa  
Posts:
515
Joined:
28-Jul-2014 5:16am
Location:
Richmond, VA
This is based on my experience over the last few years.

Get ready for a very frustrating experience finding someone, especially in the next 4 months. The good ones are taken. This Fall was a very competitive market with my recent hire entertaining several other offers. The market is very tough and it seems that some bookkeepers just don't want to work hard. I've gone through 3-4 in the last 12 months; the last 3 quit because of bizarre reasons including our stuff being too unorganized and they did not want to put the effort in improving it.

I would not look for a CPA to do bookkeeping; I don't know a CPA willing to do that level of work. I've interviewed some non-CPAs not willing to do that work due to their experience.

$25-30/hour is way too cheap and if you want them to be in SoCal I would imagine even more so. I am paying $40/hour for someone who knows what they are doing. Heck, I pay my office admin $27/hour and she deserves more. I'd budget $35-50/hour.

I use QBox to share QB files. I highly recommend that tool. Don't use Dropbox; there are a lot of warnings as to how Dropbox is not able to work with QB files well (unless that has changed over the years).

It is smart to give them a sample QB data file and watch how they work it. A lot of bookkeepers are nothing more than data entry clerks. I had one that made more of a mess and spent twice as much time doing it.

You'll have to monitor hours versus what they get done. That is the only way to know. So far, I have not had issues. I'd give them a budget by client, or figure out how many the hours should take in a month, and then compare that with what you pay.

Good luck, it's a tough market.
 

#3
Wiles  
Posts:
5052
Joined:
21-Apr-2014 9:42am
Location:
CA
2 partners + 3 admin. Nobody else?
What do the admin do? Are they all half time?
 


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