The comparison most people make, and why it misleads
A salary is compared with a monthly fee, the salary looks competitive, and the decision gets made there. The comparison is not like for like in either direction, and both sides carry costs that do not appear in the headline number.
- What employment adds Employer taxes, benefits, insurance, a workstation, software licences, recruitment, the management time to supervise, and cover for holiday, sickness and departure.
- What a fee already includes The software, the cover, the supervision and the review, and usually more than one person, so no single absence stops the work.
- What neither side shows The cost of the capability you do not get: a single hire covers one skill level, and the work that sits above or below it either goes undone or gets bought anyway.
The questions that actually decide it
What work is there, honestly?
Write down the recurring tasks and roughly what each takes. Most businesses find the genuine recurring load is well under a full-time role for longer than they expect, and that what they actually want is somebody to interpret the numbers rather than produce them.
Is the work continuous or episodic?
Continuous work suits somebody present. Episodic work, concentrated around closes, filings, raises and board meetings, suits buying capacity when it is needed.
What skill level does it need?
Recording transactions and interpreting them are different jobs. Hiring one person to do both usually means overpaying for the first or underdelivering on the second.
How much does continuity matter?
A single hire is a single point of failure, and finance is a function where an unplanned absence is felt within a week.
What happens when you grow?
Scaling a hire means another hire and a hiring cycle. Scaling a bought service is usually a conversation.
The shape that works for most businesses
Buy the recurring work and keep the decisions. The processing, the close and the compliance are bought, and somebody inside the business owns the approvals, the banking relationship and the filings. As the business grows, the first genuine hire is usually the operational role that owns the records, with the senior interpretation still bought until there is enough of it to justify a full-time seat.
Whichever way this goes, compare the two on a fully loaded basis and over a full year. A salary against an invoice is not a comparison, and it is the one that produces regret.
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