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It’s often difficult for business owners who lack the specialised financial training to determine what type of expertise their companies require. Here’s a quick checklist to help you understand your company’s needs.

Bookkeeper: A bookkeeper makes sense for a company that’s quite young, quite small, or quite strapped for cash. Expect a bookkeeper to keep accurate if basic financial records–certainly detailed enough to help an outside accounting firm prepare taxes and, if needed, to do audited year-end financial statements. A bookkeeper should also be able to handle your accounts payable and receivable; recruit for a bookkeeper to balance sheet to get the highest level of expertise available at this level.

Accountant: If significant growth is in your plans, you should hire an accountant as quickly as you can afford to. That’s because of every growing company, even a young one, requires the skills an accountant possesses, and it will grow faster with them. A good accountant can do everything a bookkeeper does but also much more, mainly because he or she is trained to have a larger perspective beyond day-to-day numbers. Count on your accountant to choose and maintain the right accounting software for your company, to generate timely weekly and monthly financial reports, and, of course, to keep cash flow on track with a well-run payables and receivables operation.

Chief Financial Officer: A Chief Financial Officer brings a management perspective to the role of finance and accounting. While an accountant keeps is responsible for timely and accurate record-keeping, a CFO is forward looking, assisting with strategy, formulation, business plans, budgets and cash flow forecasts. At the same time, he manages the accounting function and ensures that reports are meaningful and informative. he looks at risk management, operational efficiencies, financing requirements and interfaces with investors. The CFO will ensure that you get what you need, when you need it. That will allow you to concentrate on what you do best: growing your company.