Basic Bookkeeping and Working With an Accountant

If you are looking to keep your business organized and profitable, bookkeeping plays a huge role. To flourish in business, you must have a substantial knowledge of financial management, no matter how skilled you are at creating products, providing a service or marketing wears. Otherwise, you would lose money faster than you made them if you do not understand how to earn, save, spend, and invest it wisely. Financial management is not a task you should entirely leave to professionals because you need to have a knowledge of it yourself to understand its basic principles and apply it to your business daily. 

Your Basic Bookkeeping 

One of the channels to guaranteed success in business is the accurate financial analysis based on business records as this will help you answer important questions like : 

· Are you making money or losing it and how much? 

· Is your business on the solid financial ground? 

· Is there looming financial trouble? 

As a small business owner, you might find that it is expensive to employ the services of an outside accountant. Thus, it is cheaper and easier to employ someone on your team who can handle your records accurately or you could just handle it yourself. This, however, does not ignore the importance of an accountant if you can afford one as it ensures you swift information on the problems of your record keeping methodology. 

Why Good Records Are Important 

If you want your business and working capital to run successfully for a very long time, accurate and timely financial report is essential. Here's why: 

· It helps you keep track of the success of your business. With the reports you are provided, you can tell if your business is hitting the target you envisioned and if there are underlying financial problems you need to address. 

· It provides you the information you require to make decisions and devise strategies and gauge the financial outcome or impact of your decisions. 

· You would have all the necessary paperwork and balance sheets you might need if you want to obtain bank financing. 

· By producing the accurate financial information of your business, you can show them to potential partners or investors you wish to bring into your business for easy analysis. 

· Bookkeeping gives you the data you need to monitor your expenditures and plans a budget. Moreover, you would need it to create a budget for your investors to see the goal of your business as you see it. 

Importance of Record Keeping and Dealing With an Accountant 

Asides handling daily recording of transactions, maintenance of a general ledger and maintenance of your records, you would need an accountant to help with: 

· Routine tasks such as preparing financial statements, closing entries, income tax returns, budgets and so on. 

· One-time or periodic check ups 

You would require the services of the accountant at least once a year to handle filing income tax returns and closing books. However, you might need these services on a monthly or quarterly basis to keep close tabs on your business depending on the size of the business.