You’ve launched your business (congratulations!), and you know you need to keep on top of your bookkeeping. To save money in the early days, you decide to just do it yourself, even though you’ve never done it before.

From what you hear, Quickbooks makes it sound easy for an entrepreneur to use their software. Great! I’m all set, you say.

Fast forward to year-end, and your tax accountant can’t make heads or tails of your Quickbooks file due to miscategorized transactions — like loan proceeds being tagged as revenue, for example. They spend a lot of extra time cleaning things up — charging you for it, of course — and file a tax return that might still result in too much tax being paid.

This keeps happening every year, costing you extra cash that could be deployed in growing your business.

In an alternate universe, you engaged a bookkeeper from the very beginning who knows Quickbooks and accounting principles back to front. You not only avoid costly cleanups, but you have useful information at your disposal throughout the year that you can use to manage your business.

Which version of you would you rather be?