Now that the cloud is here in full force and most accounting work can be done remotely, business owners have an interesting choice to consider.

Do you want to handle your accounting the traditional way, by hiring an employee and trying to do everything in-house? Or would you rather hire an outside accountant to manage your system and handle most of your accounting functions from day one?

I’ve worked in both roles over the past 25 years, as a CPA and QuickBooks fixer and Remote Controller, and I can tell you that outside accounting is hands-down the better strategy for 95% of small businesses. I could give you a dozen reasons why but here are the top five:

Advantage #1: Experience

Outside accountants typically have years of experience and a collection of established systems and SOPs they can implement for your business. They require no training or supervision, they already know what to do and how to do it.

Advantage #2: Lower cost

Hiring an outside accountant on a fractional basis costs a lot less than trying to recruit, hire, and train an employee. The math isn’t even close: An outside accountant will cost one-third to one-half the amount of a full-time employee. Also, there are no employer costs (payroll taxes, benefits, PTO).

#3 Greater flexibility

Do you really have eight hours of accounting work every single day? Most small businesses don’t (trust me) and working with an outside accountant is a more flexible arrangement. You can hire them on a part-time basis (five hours/week, ten hours/month, whatever it takes) and scale up or down as your needs change.

#4 One-stop shopping

Small businesses often hire bookkeepers because that’s all they can afford. However, that’s not all they need. Outside accountants and firms usually provide a full range of services (bookkeeping, payroll, financial reporting, tax) and can help you keep everything under one roof.

#5 Independence

I’ve seen the same problem over and over again during my career: Internal accountants don’t see problems clearly, won’t admit when they make mistakes, and are afraid to bring bad news to the owner’s attention because they don’t want to risk losing their job.

That’s a shame because one of the accountant’s main roles is to look at the numbers objectively and highlight key issues and trends the owners need to be aware of. Outside accountants are in a much better position to do this. A good one will look at your business and financials with a skeptical mindset and tell you what’s really happening, not what they think you want to hear. And with accounting, that’s what you want.