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Accountant vs Bookkeeper

Accountant vs Bookkeeper

by | Jun 22, 2020 | Accounting, Bookkeeping | 0 comments

As wineries search for growth in today’s digital world, the accountant vs bookkeeper debate has become all the more relevant. Innovation, technology, and eCommerce have made traditional marketing strategies for wineries nearly obsolete. 

As RaboBank recently highlighted, only those wineries who respond to market changes with the needed urgency will thrive, and wine businesses that have leveraged the power of eCommerce have already seen massive returns. In this effort, the need for winery accounting and bookkeeping management has also risen.

Accountant vs Bookkeeper: Who Does What?

Before we get into which professional is right for your winery, it’s important to highlight the differences between them; each specializes in different responsibilities between financial and operational management within your winery business. 

An accountant is responsible for recording and presenting the financial well-being of a business. The most pertinent profiles for Ecommerce wineries are management accountants and tax accountants. 

Management accountants take charge of representing the financial performance of your digital business through drafting budgets, reconciling balance sheets, and analyzing financial reports stored on your eCommerce platform, among other actions. 

On the other hand, a tax accountant does tax reporting management. That includes calculating your business taxes and offering counsel on your business strategy to minimize tax audits and lessen the possibilities of tax law breaches. 

Unlike accountants, a bookkeeper records any and every financial transaction that your winery does. They are important team members, as they are responsible for identifying, recording, and labeling the purpose of every financial transaction in your winery.

Is an Accountant or a Bookkeeper Right for my Winery? 

The Ecommerce winery business model calls for both management and tax accountants. Management accountants are important as they provide you with the financial insight you need to gauge the effectiveness of your business strategy and make better financial decisions. While some winery executives feel that they can handle finances on their own, doing so will take them away from other important areas of business development, like sales and digital marketing.

Similarly, tax accountants are all the more important now than ever as winery businesses now need to enter into unchartered waters of eCommerce. Onboarding an accounting professional who has the right legal and tax knowledge in the digital field will steer you away from possible tax infringement. 

Bookkeepers take care of major responsibilities. However, practice shows that they are often too bogged down by data entry tasks that they don’t have the time to deal with possible financial issues, or provide actionable analysis and insight into the business’s key performance indicators (KPIs). While accountants can absorb the role of a bookkeeper, they tend to be overqualified and too expensive for the role. Furthermore, hiring all three professionals individually is too costly for most wineries, and the winery owner or executive is still responsible for making sure all three individuals work together seamlessly.

Luckily, the solution to this financial dilemma can be solved by getting in touch with Protea Financial.

Protea Financial: Ultimate Winery Accounting & Bookkeeping Services

Protea Financial is an accounting and bookkeeping firm that designs and implements customized accounting solutions for businesses. We are not a tax preparer, but we support businesses of all sizes in managing their finances so that they can focus on other facets of their business development. 

Our services include tax schedules, managing financial accounts, preparing accounting documentation, and bookkeeping. 

For wineries, we have an all-inclusive service that covers responsibilities needed for tax and financial management and bookkeeping, and our services are significantly less expensive than if a winery were to individually hire each professional. 

By housing all professionals under one team, we deliver the same services at a rate that’s below the average marketing-price while maintaining premium quality and accuracy. Furthermore, the winery’s leadership does not need to spend time training, overseeing, and making sure unrelated financial professionals are working together productively. 

Our team, led by Zane Stevens, consists of almost 25 accountants that, together, bring decades worth of accounting and financial managerial experience to our projects. We are poised to assist you in driving your winery business to success.

Get in touch with us to set up a consultation for your winery accounting and bookkeeping needs. We will conduct a thorough evaluation of your winery financial life-cycle to develop and propose a strategy that will lead you to financial freedom. 

Set up your evaluation today.

What are the differences between a Bookkeeper, a Management Accountant, and a Tax Accountant?

What are the differences between a Bookkeeper, a Management Accountant, and a Tax Accountant?

by | Jan 28, 2020 | Accounting, Bookkeeping, Financial Services | 0 comments

Many of our clients ask us why we talk about bookkeepers, management accountants, and tax accountants, and not just accountants.

A bookkeeper keeps track of all your daily financial transactions and assists in keeping your business organized. Receiving and paying bills, issuing invoices, categorizing expenses, taking inventory, and reconciling bank accounts are some of the daily and weekly tasks that form the core of a bookkeeper’s responsibility.

A management accountant leads the effort to provide insight into your business’s financial performance. Drafting budgets, tracking actual performance against budget, reconciling balance sheets creating cash flow forecasts, and performing inventory costings are among the duties of a management accountant to assist you in making decisions for your business.

A tax accountant provides a very specific service to calculate your taxes, minimize your chance of an audit, and guide your strategy, particularly when acquiring or selling a business or investing in assets, to minimize your potential tax liabilities.

Read About Protea Bookkeeping Services

Bookkeeping is More Than Just Crunching Numbers

While bookkeepers do a fair amount of data entry and receipt tracking, the heart of the process is labeling expenses, indicating which suppliers you paid and how much, as well as keeping a record of receipts. Your bookkeepers may also do double duty in payroll and work to prepare and issue invoices.

Even though bookkeeping work can be notably detailed, bookkeepers can be the foundation of surviving an audit. Business deductions are a huge IRS tax audit trigger. They set off alarms, which can be silenced with legal and meticulous record keeping.

What a Tax Accountant Does

Accountants perform a variety of accounting functions and are typically certified by national and professional associations. Accountants must a have a four-year college degree in accountancy. And additionally, depending on their specialty, they may have to spend up to a year earning a certification in their home state.

Tax accountants provide specialized tax advice. They calculate tax liabilities and provide strategies for legally lowering their clients’ tax liability. Business tax accountants typically have advanced degrees and help their clients with high-level strategic financial decisions.  Senior-level tax accountants take more of a theoretical approach to their clients’ overall tax strategy, helping with business plans, individual financial plans—trusts, etc.—with the goal of taking full advantage of the tax code.

What does your business need: a Bookkeeper, a Management Accountant or a Tax Accountant?

In our opinion, small businesses such as wineries need all three, and should seek specialists in each field.  Tax Accountants and Management Accountants can do your bookkeeping, but they are over-qualified, and you would be paying too much, as bookkeepers are the least expensive.  However, bookkeepers need oversight, and a good management accountant can oversee and check a bookkeeper’s work to ensure accuracy, and then provide additional insight (that a bookkeeper isn’t trained to furnish) into your business to help you make better financial decisions.

Tax accountants are typically more expensive than management accountants, and their focus is on creating an accurate tax return that will minimize your tax liabilities and risk of an audit.  They are more focused on providing an accurate report to the government than on developing recommendations for you to operate your business more efficiently.  Management accountants are focused on helping you operate your business.

Protea Financial is Your Outsourced Bookkeeping and Management Accounting Services

We match our solutions to the needs of the customer. Do your bookkeepers need extra help during end-of-year closeout?  Is your tax accountant asking you to assemble better financials in order to reduce the time they have to spend preparing your return?

Protea Financial can support you with everything from bookkeeping services, order processing and inventory tracking to handling management accounts and tax schedules in order to support your tax accountant prepare your year-end financial statements. Protea’s goal is to provide, at costs below the market average, timely, accurate, and high-quality financial information on which a business can act.

We can work with you to provide an evaluation and find the best solution for your business.