Bookkeeping For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Introduction

Bookkeepers manage all the financial data for small companies. If you subscribe to the idea that information is power (which I do), you’ll agree that the bookkeeper has a tremendous amount of power within a company. Information tracked in the books helps business owners make key decisions involving sales planning and product offerings and manage many other financial aspects of their business.

If it weren’t for the hard work of bookkeepers, companies wouldn’t have any clue about what happens with their financial transactions. Without accurate financial bookkeeping, a company owner wouldn’t know how many sales were made, how much cash was collected, or how much cash was paid for the products sold to customers during the year. He also wouldn’t know how much cash was paid to employees or how much cash was spent on other business needs throughout the year.

Accurate and complete financial bookkeeping is crucial to any business owner, but it’s also important to those who work with the business, such as investors, financial institutions, and employees. People both inside (managers, owners, and employees) and outside the business (investors, lenders, and government agencies) all depend on the bookkeeper’s accurate recording of financial transactions.

Yes, the bookkeeper’s job is crucial and requires certain skills and talents. Bookkeepers must be detailed-oriented, enjoy working with numbers, and be meticulous about accurately entering those numbers in the books. They must ...