A bookkeeping firm owner explains when to hire your first employee. Watch for signs: you're working excessive overtime, missing deadlines, dropping client communication. Hiring too early drains cash; waiting too long burns you out and costs clients. The BLS projects 6% growth in accounting jobs through 2033, pushing wages up.
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The last week we started our series and talked about a little bit about when you feel it's right that you probably should be hiring. And I'm gonna talk a little bit more in depth about hiring a new staff member and knowing when it's the right time to hire. I always say that you talk to anybody who did the first hire and their immediate answer, and we've had this even in the Law Lab where people say, oh, I should have done this way earlier. I really put this big burden on myself. And I should have done it earlier. I have a great person on staff. I'm not doing the little minutia work and it gives me time to get more work. My business is growing and it's a good thing. So as your business grows, bringing on a new team member, especially if you're solo and now you're making that big step, it might feel like a big burden. And I think that a lot of times— Yeah. The worry is if you hire too early, your budget might feel a squeeze. You may have to take a cut in pay to cover their pay. It's difficult. But if you wait too long, I think the burden is bigger because you'll end up working Saturdays, Sundays, evenings. Burnout. That's a big deal. And you don't wanna be experiencing burnout for sure. Lots of things can go wrong when you've got yourself so overworked that you don't take a moment to breathe. So you'll also find that you might be missing out on opportunities because you don't have the time to get back to people to really give them what they need. And you're not taking care of your own clients that well because you're so overburdened with work and getting more work. And expanding the team is probably the right decision. If you feel it in your gut, it's probably correct. So some of the signs that you might, find that are making it, making you realize that it's time to hire. If you think about it, look at the tasks you do in a day. And some of these tasks are gonna be taken up, taken away by artificial intelligence in the not so near future. In the near future, actually, I should be saying it in the near future, in the very near future. We're already starting to see it. So what tasks do you do? Mm-hmm. That should be done by someone who's lesser experienced and can handle doing just simple bank feed entry reconciliation, making sure the bills are entered, making sure the bills are paid, simple tasks. Are you spending hours of your day fixing mistakes because you're exhausted, you're tired, you're working on a half steam, right? Mm-hmm. Are you working so hard to grow your business that you're not following up and getting the leads because you're so tired trying to backpedal to get the work done. And if you're finding that even on your own clients, when you're trying to do it yourself, that you're missing deadlines, or maybe the ball's being dropped, you're not calling back, you're not really assisting, you're finding it irritating if somebody wants to meet with you, that's a great sign that you probably need to hire. If the ball's being dropped, some other firm will pick that ball up and take your client away from you. So it's really important That if you're starting to see mistakes in your own work, cuz you're tired, you're physically tired, not a good thing. If you're skipping out on the 3-way bank rec or sending the client any, any of the reports that they need because they're not asking and you're just like skipping it because you don't have the time to do it, that's a sign cuz you're not really taking care of the client. Think about it when accounting season happens, that's when you have crazy stress. Are you already feeling that now? And it's not in accounting season. Are you finding it stressful because the client's records are a mess? And how hiring can actually help you get organized now so that when that time comes, you're ready for high accounting season. We talk about January, February, even at the end of the year, you're trying to get the 1099s situated and ready to go. Those are things that you're going to find are definitely important and having the space and grace to actually take care of getting your clients ready for the end of the year is important. So you want to find that if your business is booming, one of the things I think you should do no matter what, even if you've got staff, is take a look at your client base. And we usually do this every year when we have, if we look at our client base and we say, oh wow, there's, I don't really like working with this person, they're slow paying or they're always an issue. Maybe they're, we've got them on autopay, but then their credit card, has went over their limit and things are stopping and it's just like a lot of stress around the client, then it's not a good fit and you probably want to move on. I think too, finding good people to do the work is very difficult. They get paid pretty good hourly wage today, but I think you can train them to get them to where you need them to be. You're going to train them in your workflows anyway, why not give them more? Mm-hmm. Now when you have more time to do it. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics predicts that accounting roles will grow 6% from 2023 to 2033. So the demand is gonna go up for good qualified people. So know that you're gonna probably have to pay more 'cause there's a shortage of us. So get somebody on board that maybe doesn't exactly have the full accounting but wants to learn. You'll know when you have a good person to fit into your team. If you already have staff, maybe your staff is indicating to you that they're overwhelmed. They're working overtime. That's never a good thing. If they're working overtime, we have a great staff of a lot of ladies, and I can tell you that they're all moms and they have little kids or older kids and they're involved in sports. If they're having to backpedal to get all this work done on weekends and things, that's hard. And they wanna be with their family. It's important to have their family time and have that quiet downtime away from the craziness of work. So if you feel like your team is stretched too thin, you're gonna see a drop in the morale and then people might start to leave. So you wanna mitigate that before it happens. So if you're turning away clients 'cause you can't keep up, there's lost business and you might have to be kept— you might have to get more people on board. And sometimes I understand that you don't really wanna bring people on and then feel like you're tight in with your budget, but it's really important to start to look at maybe helping the team not be so exhausted. The team will thank you if you add somebody on that will help alleviate some of the overtime in the— I can tell you this year for even in our firm, talking to our individual employees, they all feel that they're in a better place this year. They're having more time to go through the records because you just go in, head down, you do your work every day. And then you don't really, you wanna have that global eye view on it. And we do it every month, but seeing the big picture is always really helpful as well. But they need the time to be able to do that. And yes, the AI can help with that, but I still think there's nothing like a human brain that's got the experience and knows the file to know when there's things that need to be alerted to the client. Pay attention to the signs and you should be able to have no problem hiring somebody. You'll know when it's the right time. Know that when you make the decision, It's— you're gonna wish you'd done it earlier. And we'll dive in next week into what it costs to hire so you can have an idea of that. But just know that if you're sitting here and you're watching this video and you're going, oh my God, that's me, she just described me, then definitely start to think about hiring. It won't hurt you for sure. It— and what's the worst that can happen? You might have to let them go if work dries up. I don't think it's gonna dry up. We do really well with legal bookkeeping is a is even more scarce having a really good legal bookkeeping company than a regular bookkeeping company. And the value we provide to our clients is immense. So know that there's always gonna be that need. Until next week, I'll see you all then. Bye now. Bye.
