bookkeeping….what is it and why do you need it?

Have you ever wondered what bookkeeping is and why it is important?  Well, it’s your lucky day!  Bookkeeping is exactly what the name says, it’s the keeping and managing of a business’s “books” or financials.  There is so much that goes on behind the scenes of a business that a lot of people don’t see or necessarily understand (or have the desire to understand).  It can seem as though it’s just opening a business and selling products or providing services for customers, but what isn’t always shown is what happens with the money and how to manage it.  Managing the financials is one of the biggest drivers behind the success or failure of a business, so having a bookkeeper or accountant to assist is so important.

There are tasks that happen daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually for all businesses which must be completed timely.  If you think about things that could happen daily it could include the normal transactions of a business – selling a product, like a hoodie, or providing a service, like shoveling a sidewalk.  Those day-to-day transactions create money coming in from revenue and it needs to be accounted for.  Bills are also coming in that need to get paid – a lot of which are the same that are paid at home like utilities.  Bookkeepers can help a business owner manage these tasks and also help to provide insight monthly of where the money is going and how the business is doing, which helps to take some of the guesswork out of business-related decisions.

Bookkeepers/Accountants come in many forms.  Larger organizations tend to have onsite accountants to assist with the tasks that comes along with running the business as the volume tends to be larger.  For smaller business clients who like to be more hands-on, they tend to the day-to-day transactions of deposits and bill paying and the bookkeeper helps assist with reconciling their accounts and providing financial statements to show overall health of the business for the month/year.  Other clients who need more hands-on help can have their bookkeeper in more often to assist with payroll, deposits, billing and then the higher-level accounting assistance as well. 

Overall, bookkeeping is such an important piece of a business that can be overlooked in the excitement to open a business and provide a great good or service to customers.  The sooner the accounting is managed, the better as it’s easier to create good financial procedures right off the bat than try to clean up a big mess!  My motto is to let us number people take care of that so you can focus your attention on what makes you happy – providing your great ideas to your customers!

-Ashley