Frequently Asked Questions

Most small business owners aren’t experts in accounting, bookkeeping, payroll, controller, and CFO services and trying to manage these tasks without experience can take up valuable time and energy. By hiring a professional service like Fern CFO, you can focus on growing your business while we handle the details—keeping your financial records in order and ensuring timely employee payments. We're also well-versed in tax filing and reporting, so you won’t miss critical deadlines or face penalties.

While we’re not tax accountants, we ensure all financial and tax reports related to your payroll administration are accurate and submitted on time, helping you avoid fines or penalties for missed deadlines. For year-end tax filing, we can recommend a CPA who specializes in small business taxes to assist you.

Outsourcing is a safe and efficient way to manage your company’s financial health. We handle everything remotely, using secure cloud-based software to share information. Since the data is stored in the cloud, you and any authorized business owners or managers can access it whenever needed. All information is protected by advanced security measures and encryption, ensuring your financial data remains secure.

We handle all aspects of your employee payroll, including:

• Verifying new hires

• Reporting new employees to the IRS

• Properly classifying workers in your payroll system

• Setting up and updating tax withholdings as new IRS rules and rates are released

• Classifying exempt employees correctly

• Calculating overtime wages to ensure legal compliance

• Withholding Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance

• Timely payment of both employer and employee portions of these taxes

• Filing all required payroll reports with the IRS on schedule

• Ensuring employees are paid according to your payroll cycle

While hiring an in-house employee is an option, for most small businesses, the costs associated with adding a new staff member—salary, health insurance, taxes, additional benefits, office space, equipment, and more—are often much higher than outsourcing the work to a payroll and bookkeeping service. Furthermore, by working with a bookkeeping and accounting firm, you gain access to a team of professionals with diverse expertise across various areas, rather than relying on one person to cover all those specialties.

Unless you're a payroll and bookkeeping expert, handling these tasks yourself can be risky, especially when managing employees. Common mistakes include misclassifying workers or missing critical tax filings and deadlines, both of which can result in hefty penalties from the IRS. There are also smaller errors you might overlook that could have a significant impact on your financial future. By outsourcing, you have a professional who reviews your transactions and ensures everything is accurate, allowing you to focus on running and growing your business without worrying about financial mistakes.

Hiring an external bookkeeping firm and payroll administrator simply ensures that your finances are managed and payroll is completed on time. All approvals for payments, invoices, and other financial transactions still go through you. Many business owners schedule regular reviews with our team to go over financial transactions, assess cash flow, and review key metrics to ensure everything is accurate. Plus, you can access the system anytime, allowing you to monitor your business finances in real time and make informed decisions for budgeting and forecasting.

We assist businesses of all sizes with payroll and bookkeeping services. For very small businesses, it’s often even more crucial to keep finances organized, as mistakes or IRS-related errors can lead to costly fines or penalties. We're here to help ensure that doesn't happen.