Being a therapist is a fulfilling and rewarding profession. If your journey as a therapist has led you to entrepreneurship and you now manage your own private practice, I’m sure you’ve learned how quickly all of the back office matters can get in the way of doing what you love most. But one of those back office matters that you want to be sure you prioritize, is your business’ financial well-being. While it may not feel exciting or impactful, it plays a vital role in the success and sustainability of your business. In this blog, we’ll explore 5 reasons why therapists thrive when they intentionally prioritize their business’ financial well-being.
You’ll have increased visibility into your practice’s financial performance and cash flow. As you begin to grow your pactice, ensuring that you have cash available to pay your staff and operating expenses will become increasingly important. When you have data in an organized format, you can begin to forecast cash flow, identify trends and intentionally plan for growth.
Insurance billing will become less stressful. Did you know that the US Government Accountability Office founds that Medicare faced a significant risk for improper payments (incorrect amounts or payments that shouldn’t have been made), which reached an estimated $46.8 billion in fiscal year 2022? This is often due to poor documentation. Bookkeeping and advisory services can help you to create a billing workflow and reconciliation process to ensure that claims are submitted accurately, sufficient documentation exists, and payments are being received timely.
You’ll remain HIPAA compliant while keeping good books and records. QuickBooks Online, which is our preferred accounting software platform, does not comply with HIPAA standards. But sales data from your electronic health records (EHR) software can be entered into QuickBooks Online to ensure you stay compliant with HIPAA standards while equipping yourself to keep complete accounting records.
Tax payments will become substantially easier to calculate and remit, reducing or eliminating interest and penalties. Profitable businesses pay taxes. Part of prioritizing your business’ financial well-being includes making your estimated tax payments throughout the year. When you don’t wait until tax time to make estimated tax payments, you avoid interest, penalties, stress, headaches, and financial constraints.
It’ll simplify your tax compliance and tax planning process. Bookkeeping and advisory are not precursors to tax preparation and tax planning – they are a great byproduct though. As part of your effort to maintaining good books and records and take a proactive approach to tax planning, you’ll find that tax compliance and tax planning become a lot less stressful. Organizing your transactions in real-time, creating a receipt storage system, and regularly reviewing your business’ performance will make tax season predictable and uneventful, which are great adjectives when it comes to taxes.
Although you’re self-employed, you don’t have do all of the work by yourself. Prioritizing your business' financial well-being could mean outsourcing your accounting, tax and advisory functions. Accounting and tax matters can take up hours per month when done correctly. If it does, outsourcing it to a trusted professional gives you back time to focus in your genius zone. While you prioritize patient care, ASE Group would be happy to prioritize your business’ financial matters.
