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June 26, 2009

What is a bookkeeper?

A bookkeeper is usually employed by a small to mid-size company to record its transactions such as sales, purchases, payroll, collection of accounts receivable, payment of bills, etc. A very small company might use the services of a bookkeeping firm that employees bookkeepers.

Since bookkeepers typically do not have a four-year accounting degree, an accounting firm will review the financial statements prepared by a company’s bookkeeper.

A bookkeeper today is expected to be comfortable using accounting software.

Learn more about what bookkeepers do at our Accounting Jobs and Opportunities page.

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9 Responses to “What is a bookkeeper?”

  1. Suzanne on July 4th, 2009 12:15 pm

    As a bookkeeper for an attorney firm, they are still doing the books by hand with a black book [as they call it for all transactions] one for trust acctg [their IOLTA account] and one for just writing checks. Having all these books are confusing at best. But I know this is very “old school”. The ledger sheet in the black book is over 8 x 14 in page. A lot of their bookkeeping is really redundant and has everyone using the books, which has mistakes. The way they are doing things is very time consuming. I have talked them into Quickbooks and will be inputting the data in this program, which also will be very time consuming. Now, to set them up should I talk to their CPA and see how they want it done or do it the way I was taught to set up for attorneys?

    Thank you in advance for your response.

  2. Kathleen on July 5th, 2009 10:50 am

    Suzanne,
    You will save yourself and the firm a lot of grief if you ask the CPA for the chart of accounts he/she uses when preparing the tax return. I work for a small firm and we routinely give new clients a master chart of accounts, with adjustments and additions and deletions that are specific to their company to use when setting up Quickbooks. It makes life easier for us, and can be fine tuned as you need to add accounts during the course of recording the transactions.
    Good luck on your project!

  3. Mamuda on July 6th, 2009 7:14 am

    Bookeeper is a person employed by an emloyer in order to keep financial records for it’s business activities.eg recieved and payment accounts,salaries payment vouchers and any financial transaction for a period of time.

  4. afolabi olawale on July 6th, 2009 11:22 am

    role of information Technology in accounting

  5. Suzanne on July 19th, 2009 5:36 pm

    Kathleen:

    Thank you for your response and insight. I will contact the CPA and go from there. This will be a project, but once up and running it will be a lot easier to balance and produce reports for them that I know they are looking for.

    Thank you again.

  6. zabihulah on July 22nd, 2009 4:59 am

    i like ur best teacher

  7. Octavia on July 22nd, 2009 8:26 pm

    I purchased this complete set. It is awesome.

  8. Jim Parson on July 27th, 2009 12:08 pm

    How can I e-mail you an attachment. I have a tool you really might want to see.

    Jim Parson
    parsoneabaohe@gmail.com

  9. Raymond on August 5th, 2009 4:39 am

    i work for a small firm, now i know that i am a bookkeeper, i was assumering that i am an accountant.
    thanks for let me know

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