5 Reasons why health services need a bookkeeper in Melbourne

Good financial health is crucial for any business – and that includes healthcare services.

Whether you’re a privately-run clinic, a pharmacy, an allied health professional or a specialist, good financial management and bookkeeping are the key to keeping your operations running smoothly.

As health services expenditure in Australia continues to rise (up to $81.8 billion per year at the most recent count) you may have noticed your bookkeeping and financial management simultaneously becoming more complicated.

Just like any other business, bookkeeping in healthcare is quite complex – it also can’t be overlooked if you want your operation to thrive.

Are your office staff struggling to keep up? If so, a new bookkeeping system may be in order!

The importance of bookkeeping to health services

Bookkeeping is crucial to healthcare specialists like yourself – unfortunately, it’s also a task that many take on themselves.

Some hand off their bookkeeping to their receptionist, admin staff or even take on that job themselves – needless to say, this comes with a couple of issues:

• You’re a medical specialist, not a bookkeeper
• It’s extra work on top of your regular responsibilities
• You may not have the tools needed to do it properly

Luckily, engaging a bookkeeper in Melbourne – one with experience working with health services – can address each of these issues…

Improve your business cash flow

Healthcare services deal with funds, just like any other business or institution. In fact, your cash inflows and outflows are even more complex than most others, since you’ll need to deal with:

• Various payers
• Medicare
• The ATO
• Private health insurance providers
• Government and non-government organisations

That’s a lot of outstanding bills, invoices, debts and transfers to keep on top of if you want to maintain healthy cash flow. 

Luckily, there’s an easier way.

Letting a bookkeeper in Melbourne fix your system – or better yet, take care of crunching the numbers for you – helps you to keep a healthy cash flow while also ensuring that you aren’t tripped up by the sheer amount of different transactions a health service needs to keep track of.

Tracks outstanding bills and debts

Healthcare services often receive payments from patients, either in the form of out-of-pocket payments, by private medical insurance companies, or by government healthcare systems.

The last two are pretty easy to keep track of – it’s the first one that presents the most issues.

Tracking invoices is one of the hardest parts of bookkeeping in any industry, and healthcare services are no exception. If you want to maintain good cash flow, it’s important that you track records of payments and follow-up on incurred bills.

Fail to do so, and you may find your financial situation suffering as a result due to a lack of cash to pay for expenses!

Monitor financial records

Accounting is all about the big picture. It’s about seeing where your organisation is at financially, and planning for the future accordingly.

It can’t do that without financial records from your bookkeeping department!

Accurate, orderly and well-organised financial records can have a great impact on how your healthcare service plans for the future and budgets. That’s why it’s so important that you make sure invoices, bank statements, tax returns, and many more are in order.

A Melbourne bookkeeper ensures that all of these financial records are recorded accurately and in a timely manner, allowing you and your accountant to make crucial financial decisions in the future.

Tax Management

Taxation and tax return procedures can be difficult for any business – when it comes to health services however, it gets even more complicated. What happens to GST when many of the payments you deal with are covered under Medicare or private health insurance?

It’s a complicated and confusing area – some might even call it a minefield. It’s also incredibly important for your business.

Luckily, engaging a professional bookkeeper can reduce the amount of stress that can come from this area, allowing you to continue helping patients without needing to worry about whether or not you’re properly reporting your tax situation.

Cloud bookkeeping platforms like Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks automatically calculate all of this information for you, allowing you to keep your tax reporting accurate.

Supports in decision making

When making decisions, it’s important that you know what you’re dealing with exactly.

And that’s what good financial recordkeeping does.

Accurate and up-to-date financial records help healthcare institutions to make sound and relevant business and finance decisions. While this may be an accountant’s area of specialty, the information your bookkeeping offers can also guide your decisions. 

When you work with a bookkeeper in Melbourne, you’ll have all the cash flow reports, balance sheets, and other financial information you need to make the right call for your healthcare service. 

We’ll ensure that all of this information is accurate, giving you all of the information and context you need to decide your next move or acquisition.

Why hire a bookkeeping service in Melbourne?

Saves money on the overhead cost

When you hire a full-time, in-house bookkeeper, you won’t just need to pay wages – you’ll also need to look after super, benefits and all sorts of other things.

And don’t forget, you’re also going to have to do payroll – something that’ll complicate your bookkeeping even further.

Outsourcing your bookkeeping on the other hand is much simpler – you’ll only have to pay a single fee for expert bookkeeping services.

Provides various services

A bookkeeper doesn’t just crunch the numbers and generate reports – they can also help your healthcare service with financial assistance such as:

• Managing payroll
• Expense tracking
• Invoice management

And that’s on top of the services listed above!

All of this means that your admin team won’t have to split their attention, allowing them to focus on what they do best.

You’re hiring an expert

One of the biggest issues with doing your own bookkeeping is the risk of mistakes. After all, you aren’t a bookkeeper – you might not even be that good at maths at all!

By engaging a bookkeeping company to manage your health service’s bookkeeping needs, you minimise the chances of errors, miscalculations and other bookkeeping issues.

A proper bookkeeper doesn’t just have the training – they’ll also have a range of job experiences working with clients in different fields, including healthcare, as well as access to specialised tools. All of this can be a boon for your operation!

And while we’re on the topic of tools…

Advanced Tools

At Maximum Business Solutions, we aren’t just bookkeepers – we’re cloud bookkeepers.

What’s the difference? Simple: we specialise in setting up innovative, easy-to-use cloud bookkeeping solutions for clients just like you.

Cloud bookkeeping is versatile, and great for healthcare providers of all shapes and sizes thanks to its ability to:

• Automate your bookkeeping
• Generate invoices, reports and more
• Integrate with your other accounts
• Customise functions with addons and plug-ins
• Be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection

Of course, the process of actually getting set up is still a bit of work – luckily, that’s what our cloud bookkeepers are here for!

As cloud specialists, we can help you by helping set up a tailored package that meets your needs, migrating your current records over and training your team to use cloud bookkeeping.

We’re specialists in a range of different cloud bookkeeping systems such as Xero, Quickbooks and MYOB. Whatever your healthcare service does, we’ll make your bookkeeping simple and easy.

Bookkeepers in Melbourne for healthcare services

Maximum Business Solutions provides bookkeeping services to all types of businesses across Melbourne’s southeast.

And that includes healthcare services like yours!

Whether you’re expanding your service and looking to level up your bookkeeping to go with that or simply looking for a better way of doing things, we’re the team for you.

Contact us now on (03) 9589 0128 for reliable and transparent bookkeeping service in Melbourne.