3 Things To Know If You Hire Freelancer as a Bookkeeping Services

Nearly 54 million Americans are now doing freelance work, according to a 2015 study conducted by the independent research firm Edelman Berland and commissioned by Freelancers Union and Upwork.

If you’re a startup or a company who operates in the digital sphere, hiring freelancers can be a great way to access quality work from a much larger pool of applicants. Freelancers don’t require the same benefits, payroll taxes, and other considerations that full-time employees need, but you do have to make sure you have professional bookkeeping services in place before deciding to go that route.

Keep reading to find out how professional bookkeeping services make it much easier to attract and retain freelance talent.

Onboarding

If you hire a freelancer who isn’t physically located in the same city as your office, providing them with all of the proper contract documentation, tax forms, and training materials can be a logistical challenge. It’s easy for things to fall through the cracks when the person isn’t actually sitting in your office, able to ask questions as they occur. Using the professional bookkeeping and payroll services offered by Remote Quality Bookkeeping allows you to turn the process of onboarding new contractors, interns, and other non-employees over to a third-party so you can focus on keeping things running smoothly. Then, when you need it, all the documentation will be available in an easily-accessible digital form.

Taxes

Even though freelancers and remote contractors aren’t technically your employee, you’re still required to track their income for tax purposes. Instead of a W4, freelancers must fill out a W9 so that the IRS knows you’ve paid them income. When tax time rolls around, you’ll need to issue freelancers a 1099 form rather than a W2 so that they can pay their taxes accurately. Trying to keep track of all of this information in a paper filing system is the perfect way to make a tax mistake. With a professional bookkeeping service, you can rest easy while someone else takes care of gathering and issuing tax forms for freelancers.

Payroll Management

Once your freelancer has been trained and filled out all the proper income reporting tools for the IRS, it’s time for them to get to work, which means it’s time for you to pay them! Freelancers today expect multiple payment options, and unless they work in the same city as your office, a paper check probably isn’t going to cut it. Remote Quality Bookkeeping is setup to process paychecks in QuickBooks as well as direct deposit for all employees and contractors. Never worry about incorrect or late payments ever again, with our help.

Subcontractors and freelancers are valuable assets in an increasingly digital world, and using them is a smart business decision for young companies. However, managing them can come along with confusing time-consuming tasks that many managers and business owners just don’t want to deal with. That’s why Remote Quality Bookkeeping exists: to manage payroll and taxes so you don’t have to!