Managing numbers is not that simple, especially when the financial year is closing in. Between organizing receipts and reconciling accounts, there’s not enough time to track finances and run the company.

You need help quickly before your financial records become messier. But hiring a full-time accounting staff seems too big a step, considering your limited resources.

Consider hiring a financial virtual assistant. These remote professionals offer specialized support to help you stay financially clear. They will be with you—virtually—whenever the need arises to ensure your financial systems run like clockwork.

This blog post explores the ways a remote assistant helps you stop wasting time on tax prep and make better decisions.

What is a Virtual Assistant for Your Year-End Financials?

A virtual assistant is a remote professional who handles your year-end tax preparation. This includes expense tracking and document preparation, among others. Using various accounting tools and software, they can streamline these processes and ensure accuracy. Along the way, they free up your time so you can focus on your strategic business goals.

Unlike general remote assistants, accounting remote assistants have niche expertise in financial management. They understand compliance requirements and know their way around tools like Xero and QuickBooks.

VAs serve as an extension of your core finance team, to whom you are delegating administrative tasks to boost productivity. They alleviate financial chaos by tackling non-revenue-generating activities.

5 Tasks a VA Can Handle for Year-End Financials

When you launch a business, you spend every hour growing it. But like many entrepreneurs, you hardly get the time you need to scale the company due to operational tasks. Accounting, being one of them, is often pushed to the side to make room for growth ventures.

To stay compliant and reduce audit risks, you can hire a virtual assistant for tax season preparation. They can help you stay on top of your finances without getting bogged down in the details.

Here is your small business tax prep checklist for a virtual assistant:

Expense Tracking

A virtual assistant can systematically track all your transactions in real time. They can help you make sense of where you are spending your money.

Here’s how they operate to follow your every dollar and wrap up your year-end finances:

• Compare budgets
• Monitor business expenses
• Sort your expenses in the correct category
• Prepare monthly expense reports for better budgeting
• Spot duplicate/unnecessary cost entries
• Uncover a saving opportunity

Receipt Organization

Your VA is not just filing receipts; they are categorizing them to make sure all eligible deductions are accounted for.

Here’s how a financial remote assistant can organize your receipts:

• Collect all receipts (paper and digital)
• Tag and sort entries for easier access (for audits and taxes)
• Digitize paper receipts
• File and store receipts in labelled folders
• Match and verify receipts with the accounting entries

These receipts are proof of purchase, which is crucial for tax deductions. Having an expert remote assistant to manage them ensures all expenses are captured when filing taxes. This not only provides documentation for your deductions but also mitigates tax risks.

Account Reconciliation

Your remote assistant actively balances your accounts and finds discrepancies. They maintain accurate records and prevent errors. This way, all accounts are reconciled at the end of each accounting period.

Here’s what they can do:

• Review transactions
• Double-check entries from multiple sources
• Record verifications
• Utilize bank reconciliation tools
• Create detailed reports using visualizations and analytics

Hire a VA for QuickBooks reconciliation so you can perform proper reconciliation. You can go about your business as the boss while ensuring all your reconciliations remain precise and compliant.

Document Preparation

When your business goes through an audit, documentation should be prioritized. And outsourcing year-end tax document organization to a virtual assistant is how you do it. They collect and arrange all your essential financial documents, such as receipts and bank statements, and have them ready for tax review.

Here’s how a financial VA initiates the proactive documentation of your finances:

• Record and sort transactions
• Monitor compliance tasks
• Create audit-ready reports
• Maintain and share documentation logs

Invoice Management

If you’re losing hours chasing payments, pass this task to a remote assistant. They can cover all associated activities for processing invoices from vendors. This is crucial for year-end tax calculations, as you need to ensure all revenue is recorded in the right financial period.

Here’s how a VA makes certain your cash flow is consistent with no delays that cause payment logs:

• Generate professional invoices
• Follow up on overdue payments
• Match invoice details with purchase orders
• Pay vendors promptly

Benefits of Delegating These Tasks to a Virtual Assistant

Here’s what you should know about bringing in a virtual assistant to cover your financial-related tasks:

More Time in Your Hands

The first thing you gain from delegating to a VA is saving time on the year-end financial review. From categorizing expenses to finding missing data, you save hours on these tasks and focus your energy on the strategic aspects of your business.

The time savings will not just enhance your productivity, though. It will also alleviate your stress and map out new possibilities for your company.

Ensures Accuracy

Mistakes in your financial sheets are not just bad; they’re deadly for your business. Imagine receipts not being in the right place and payments not being processed. These things are easily overlooked when you’re busy being a boss.

Delegating to a virtual assistant ensures every financial process is handled with precision and consistency. They use a well-structured system to keep financial records organized and up-to-date.

This results in tidy books and fewer mistakes with no last-minute scrambling for tax season. Their methodological approach of keeping the numbers lined up protects your financial standing.

Improves Organization

You need a clear picture of your financial performance for accurate tax filing. To do that, reports must be organized and precise with no room for guesswork. But that’s not the case with your spreadsheets.

Start being accurate with the expert support of a remote professional. They can oversee your financial records all year round, so you don’t have to pull everything at the last minute. They keep things slick, sending regular summaries and breaking down expenses.

When it comes to financial management, clarity is power. Thus, you should always operate from a place of knowing rather than guessing.

Supports your Accountant

When your package of documents is in total disarray, it’s hard to be confident about your financial records. An online assistant ensures accountants get the assistance they need to keep the books in order and clean. They track down the due dates, organize the invoices and everything in between.

VAs thrive behind the scenes, keeping data current and easily accessible for your accountants. This makes the work of your core team much easier.

How To Delegate Bookkeeping to a Virtual Assistant?

Remote workers are not your typical office employees—a virtual assistant managing business finances while traveling is the norm.

This makes the success of your virtual collaboration a little bit tricky. It requires the right management tips and tricks to make the process smoother.

Here are some life-saving tips on how to outsource bookkeeping tasks to a remote professional:

• Evaluate your needs. Clearly outline the responsibilities you want your virtual worker to handle. This removes the confusion and strengthens accountability.
• Take advantage of technology. Use cloud-based tools to streamline communication and collaboration. These platforms make collaboration easier and access to information faster.
• Check and assess regularly. Appraise your VA's performance periodically. In doing so, you can address issues promptly and adjust expectations as needed, ensuring the arrangement remains beneficial for everyone.
• Enforce security measures. Maintain robust security measures to safeguard your confidential data. Work with your financial virtual assistant on it, and make sure they practice data privacy and confidentiality.

End the Tax Prep Headaches with a VA

As a business owner, your time is everything. There’s no need to spend time hunching over bank statements and chasing payments when someone else can do it. Cost-effective financial admin support for entrepreneurs is just a click away.

The right virtual assistant can streamline time-consuming processes, helping you stay compliant and scale with confidence. Their support also allows you to make informed financial decisions to move the business forward.

At VAV, we help businesspeople improve their financial management by delivering quality virtual assistant services. We thrive in the business with more than a decade of expertise. With our expert handling of your year-end financials, you can get organized and achieve your financial goals.

Get your financial record straight right now and minimize audit anxiety.

Book a consultation with one of our experts and see how we can streamline your stress-inducing tax preparation process.