BookCheck

It's taken us 20 years to work this one out............

Posted on January 31, 2014

 

Since we started BookCheck in 1994, so hey it's our 20th birthday, we've always handled all the bookkeeping (apart from the sales side) as the basis for producing Management Accounts. But recently we realised that we haven't properly described the two as combined, we've showed them as two distinct services on our menus, our email signatures, our cards - everywhere. So at long last we have rebranded throughout BookCheck to "Bookkeeping with Management Accounts". It's subtle but important that we are clear.

So not just Bookkeeping and not just Management Accounts but the two together. What　differentiates us from a firm of bookkeepers or a firm of accountants is our guarantee　that all our Management Accounts are both thoroughly checked and issued personally by a qualified accountant.

So before you reach 20, or even if you have, it's worth checking that you really do explain clearly what your business does. Being clear to you is not enough.

Take a peep at our website and see if you think we have 'done the job' - we would very much appreciate your comments.

Anthony Pilkington, Managing Director, BookCheck Ltd

This entry was posted in Accounting, Business Development, Management Accounts and tagged in Bookkeeping, Management Accounts, Accountant, BookCheck by bookchadmin

Outsourcing - why not now? It's no longer just for the big companies

Posted on November 4, 2013

Why outsource or more positively why not? Outsourcing used to be something that was just for very large organisations. Increasingly though, small and medium sized businesses are realising the benefits of outsourcing some of their functions to reduce costs, increase resilience and allow them to do what they do best, run their own business.

A great example of this for BookCheck recently was our online Sage service. In short it was a huge responsibility and a big worry. Computer 'problems' just seemed to become more serious each year. We had been proudly providing a service for 9 years which made us way ahead of the field. Nine years ago most businesses would not have risked this novel way of holding data - now it's called "The Cloud".

We woke up one day to realise that our core business is book-keeping with Management Accounts, not providing hosted Sage online. So we outsourced the whole task and boy do we feel so much better. We're also saving many £'000s which makes us smile and on top of that our quality of hosted service is considerably better. I call that a win, win, win.

Arguably a business should get on with what it does best and find someone else to handle as much as possible of everything else. Payroll is common with the vast majority outsourced but there are plenty of other areas. Website, HR, IT are the most obvious but there's also our own service book-keeping with Management Accounts for example. We outsourced our whole telephone answering system 15 years ago and that was one of our best ever decisions.

One of the reasons why outsourcing is become more the norm is the huge rise in the availability of data and support online - everything from i-Phone apps to social media. It's a fact that data is moving from the floor to the Cloud, in the process transforming the ways in which businesses are run - that in itself is a form of outsourcing.

We're running a free Outsourcing Seminar at Gloucester Rugby Club on the 22nd November at 8am - I hope to see you there for a valuable hour and a half.

Anthony Pilkington

MD, BookCheck Ltd

 

This entry was posted in Accounting, Business Development, Management Accounts and tagged in Outsourcing, BookCheck, Management Accounts, Payroll, Cloud Software by bookchadmin