I`m starting my own business and am curious if anyone outsources their accounting.  What do most business owners think about doing their own accounting vs. outsourcing it?

Now we think that there are actually two questions here. Do you outsource your bookkeeping and do you outsource your accounting?

To us (and we may be wrong here), bookkeeping is the monotonous, day to day keeping of a companies books. Whereas accounting is doing the monthly and yearly wrap ups.

As a small business, we do our own bookkeeping, as it would be cost prohibitive to have someone else do this.

However, we do pay an accountant on a monthly basis. The accountant closes the books for the month (making sure we didn`t mess something up), runs the monthly reports, and keeps us in line financially. Of course, he also does the year end taxes.

So to answer your question, we do our own bookkeeping and we do outsource our accounting.

I suppose I`m questioning the whole shooting match!  For a small business, (ie. under a million in revenue) with up to 100 transactions (checks) a month, I can let someone else do the whole daggum thing for me.  Pay all the bills, process payroll for 4 employees, reconcile the bank statements, record all the deposits and process month end close.  Granted, I do have to make the deposit at the bank and code all the invoices, but they do everything else for me.  I just fax them the a packet of all my mail each week and they do the rest. 

All that for about $800 a month!  Not a chance I could hire even a part time employee to do all that for $800 a month.  Plus, they know what they`re doing and I don`t!  That`s the best part... It`s piece of mind!

I`ve been reading on this forum and it seems that most people do their own "Bookkeeping" and have a CPA or someone do their taxes.  My CPA only charges me $600 to do my individual and corporate returns.  $800 a month is about $9,600 a year... Plus $600 for the returns is a grand total of $10,200!  There is NO WAY I could get this quality of work out of a part time employee and only pay them $10k a year.  That`s basically a $10/hr employee at 20 hours a week.  That`s a high school student, at best!  All the logic I have says that outsourcing my "Accounting" (ie. bookkeeping and taxes and whatever else) is the best, most economic route for my business!

Someone tell me I`m wrong and I won`t do it! 

Yes if you want services you can visit indevia.com It will solve all your problem

I don`t outsource either accounting or bookkeeping. Bookkeeping is a routine, and with decent software and a student, you can get that task done easily. I sit on top of my cashflow every day, and keep my stuff up-to-date realtime to do that. Secondly, the information in my books goes well beyond the accounting worlds numbers - I want operating data out of my information, to help me with decision making. So no way will I hand that off to an outside service that takes a formulaic approach. Lastly, monthly closing entries, and Y/E work are easy matters, and it is not worth bringing in someone to do that. Monthlies are pretty repetitive. Y/Es are a bit harder, but not much, for nine out of ten operations.
As for the financial accounting - just dumping standard statements once the G/L trial balance is in shape is so simple that it is not worth paying someone, and I want my close within 1 or 2 days of month end, not on the 15th. Annual statements, unless you need a review engagement report, are every bit as simple. Most simple accounting texts will get you over your discomfort level pretty fast.
With a decent tax package, taxes are also pretty easy, unless you have very complex transactions - then you might engage an accountant for guidance.
Problem with outsourcing this stuff is that after a while you bleed cash, and you still have to spend time with the service. So I outsource as little as possible. instead I focus on reducing the burden of the required work.
But other`s mileage varies

Mike