Many of the businesses and individuals that come into our offices often ask if they can be their own accountant in Seattle. The simple answer is that they can be. Any business or individual can take complete control of their financial records and accounting at any time. The more important question that you should be asking is should you be your own accountant?
Accountants (whether hired as a full-time salaried role in an office or as a freelancer every month) are highly trained and extremely experienced in financial record keeping. There are also multiple different types of accountants, ranging from forensic accountants and CPA’s to tax preparation accountants.
The most important aspect of whether you should take over the role and responsibility of being your own accountant is if you have a relative amount of experience. For some types of accounting services (such as forensic accounting), the simple answer is that you will lack the required experience to do so. For other types of accounting (such as CPA’s), you legally cannot represent yourself as such without the correct qualifications and experience.
However, if you are wondering if you can be your own accountant in a bookkeeping sense, you absolutely can. But I would always advise that you take some form of accounting training and financial record keeping training also. There are also tools such as QuickBooks that will allow you to do your own accounting to a high level, making it much simpler.
If you decide to use QuickBooks or other accounting tools to help you take control of your own accounting, it’s always best to take training courses. They are inexpensive, fast, and relatively easy if you are good with numbers. Otherwise, I would highly suggest using an accountant such as Accountant Seattle to help with any accounting needs you may have!
