When you hire a new bookkeeper, wouldn’t it be nice if you could start very slowly, dip a toe in the water, see if you like the work that your bookkeeper does and then progressively accelerate the pace of the work? Unfortunately, this is seldom practical as there usually is a backlog of work that needs to be caught up in short order. So, how do you protect yourself from sticker shock?

Finding a bookkeeper or a bookkeeping firm that you like is not an easy task. It seldom happens in a matter of days. Typically, by the time you selected and engaged the bookkeeper of your choice, the books have fallen behind and there is a lot of catch up work to do. Also, in many cases, one of the reasons you were looking for a new bookkeeper might be that the person in charge of the books before might not have done a very good job. So, not only there is a backlog of work, but there might also be some cleanup required.

All this conspires to flip your relationship with your bookkeeper on its head. Ideally, the first few weeks/months of work should be about your bookkeeper getting familiar with your business and you gaining confidence in your bookkeeper. You’d like to go on a slow jog to warm up before you start running all out. Unfortunately, most bookkeeping relationships start with a sprint: a heavy workload upfront under tight time constraints. If this is not done carefully, costs can creep up and the first invoice you will get from your bookkeeper will take you by surprise. How can you minimize this risk of sticker shock?