Finding the right bookkeeper for your small business is critical—someone who's not only accurate with numbers but also reliable, communicative and comfortable with the software you use. That's where a structured reference check makes all the difference.

This Bookkeeper Reference Check Form is designed specifically for small businesses hiring bookkeepers, whether full-time, part-time or contract. It asks previous employers or supervisors to evaluate the candidate across the areas that matter most: accuracy and attention to detail, software proficiency, financial reporting quality, deadline consistency and communication clarity. Instead of generic references, you get targeted insights into how the bookkeeper actually performs on the job.

The form is built for hiring managers, HR teams, finance leads and small business owners who want to make confident hiring decisions. It's simple enough to send in minutes, professional enough to get thoughtful responses, and structured to compare multiple references side by side.

Paperform makes it easy to collect, organise and review references without the usual email back-and-forth. You can embed the form on your careers page, send it directly to references via a link, and use conditional logic to tailor questions based on the reference's relationship to the candidate. All responses are stored securely and can be exported, shared with your team, or synced into your HR system.

Need to streamline your entire hiring workflow? Connect this form to Stepper at stepper.io to automatically notify your team when a reference is submitted, create tasks for follow-up interviews, or route strong candidates into your onboarding sequence—all without manual handoffs.

Whether you're hiring your first bookkeeper or building out a finance team, this template helps you gather the insights you need to hire with confidence.