How Much Time Should you Spend on your Accounting?

How valuable is your time? $50/hr, $100/hr, $500/hr?

Every Founder and Startup has a limited amount of time in a day. Most Founders prefer not to spend that time doing accounting work, so we asked these entrepreneurs to share how much time they spent on their bookkeeping, accounting, and financial reporting every month.

Our goal at Full Send Finance is to create a seamless experience to manage your bookkeeping, accounting, and financial reporting rhythms. So we ask the question - how much is your time worth?

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Here is the amount of time these entrepreneurs spend on their bookkeeping per month:

• A Few Hours Per Month
• At Least 12 Hours Per Month
• 4 to 5 Hours
• 48 Hours Per Month
• About 10 Hours Per Month
• We Used to Spend Over 20 Hours Per Week But Using Quickbooks Helps Reduce it by 70 - 80%
• As Little Time as Possible
• Roughly 10 Hours Every Month

A Few Hours Per Month

I spend around 3-4 hours per month on my bookkeeping, financial reports, and accounting. I make sure to give it enough time each month to ensure I stay organized and up-to-date. By allocating a smaller amount of highly focused time, I find that I’m able to stay on top of the process much more easily than if I did a little at a time over the course of the month. For all tax-related finances, I work with a professional so that I don’t have to worry about making any costly mistakes.

Matthew Ramirez, Founder, Paraphrase Tool

At Least 12 Hours Per Month

I usually keep track of the financial side of our business for at least 30 minutes per day. That will add up to a total of 12 hours per month. Daily sales must be tracked. It will be the same for stock inventories, payables, and income monitoring. Any entrepreneur must know the daily monetary health of their business. Doing so can allow for any adjustments or changes to address gaps and challenges. Even if someone is doing it for you, spend some time checking on the records for at least a few minutes each day. It will give you more free hand in adjusting the sails when the going gets tough.

Laura Martinez, Consultant, PersonalityMax

4 to 5 Hours

I spend 4 to 5 hours every month on my bookkeeping, accounting, and financial reporting. I spend about 2 hours on processing transactions and getting them in the books and about 1 hour on reconciliation and preparation of financial statements. Then I spend an hour or two on the weekend doing the quarterly taxes, which includes establishing the books and preparing the tax returns and analyzing monthly receipts and expenses to make sure I have everything in order.

Tiffany Homan, COO, Texas Divorce Laws

48 Hours Per Month

In our small business, the average time spent on book-keeping, financial reporting and accounting is 12 hours per week. This translates to about 48 hours per month. We evaluate the potential trouble spots and examine the financial trends among others. Understanding cash flow, assets and financial position of the business is critical, which is why the time dedicated for the roles is significant. The routine has increased our business's financial awareness.

yongming Song, CEO, Live Poll for Slides

About 10 Hours Per Month

I spend about 10 hours per month on my bookkeeping, accounting, and financial reporting. I do the majority of my accounts through an online service that automates most of the process. It costs me $150/month, but it saves me time and energy by allowing me to spend less time doing things like posting invoices, reconciling bank accounts, and making sure I have accurate numbers for reporting purposes.  When I need to do something more complex or specific than what the online service offers, I can always hire a person to do it for me or learn how to do it myself if needed.

Amer Hasovic, Operations, Love & Lavender

We Used to Spend Over 20 Hours Per Week But Using Quickbooks Helps Reduce it by 70 - 80%

We used to spend countless hours per week (over 20) in account management. A straightforward tutorial in QuickBooks helped us more than anything we've ever experienced. Our CPA came on-site and showed us how to manage online and use a desk scanner for receipts, making life manageable again. Quickbooks not only reduced our time by 70-80%, but it also organized our finances and made tax season much less stressful. 

Tammy Sons, CEO, TN Nursery

As Little Time as Possible

When I first started my business 6 years ago, my first two major expenses were on a bookkeeper and a quarterly CPA review. Why? Because I did the math. If I had spent hours and hours categorizing transactions, reconciling my books, and reading through pages of the tax code, it would equal to a number greater than what those services cost.

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I'm extremely pragmatic, and ultimately I look at everything through the lens of effectiveness and being able to buy back my time whenever possible. The only time I spend each month/quarter is reviewing our financials at a super high level and making sure things still look right. Other than that, I leave it up to the pros and they seem to be doing a much better job than I ever could have!

Ken Marshall, Founder, Best Freelancer Tools

The only time I spend each month/quarter is reviewing our financials at a super high level and making sure things still look right. Other than that, I leave it up to the pros and they seem to be doing a much better job than I ever could have! - Ken Marshall

Roughly 10 Hours Every Month

I spend about 10 hours per month on bookkeeping, accounting, and financial reporting. This includes things like tracking income and expenses, preparing financial statements, and staying up-to-date on changes in tax laws. I find that this is a necessary part of running a successful business, and it helps me keep tabs on how we're doing financially. I'm always looking for ways to improve our bookkeeping and financial reporting, so that we can continue to run our business efficiently and effectively.

Harry Virk, Founder, CleaningPRO

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From this group, it appears that between 5-10 hours per month is most common for a small business. When you are evaluating whether or not to offload your accounting responsibilities to a professional service provider, ask yourself - what is my time worth. This may help you better understand and evaluate the breakeven point of bringing on an outside party to assist.

Of course, there are many factors that weigh into a decision like this. Our goal at Full Send is to not only give you your time back, but also equip you with the right data in order to be more effective with your strategic planning time. If you have any questions on evaluating outside accounting or finance services, drop us a line at howdy@fullsendfinance.com.