Contact phone number:

Contact email:


What Does a Bookkeeper Do? A Simple Explanation

December 4, 2023

Only 12% of entry-level bookkeepers have a bachelor’s degree, so having one is an easy way to gain an advantage. Consider a bachelor’s degree in accounting, business administration, or finance. What’s more, a bookkeeping certification will help you hone your skills and provide more in-depth job training. This also provides a competitive advantage for bookkeepers beginning their careers. If you’re organised and enjoy working with numbers, a job as a bookkeeper could be a good fit. The requirements will vary based on the organisation you work for and your responsibilities.

You will need to learn how to start a bookkeeping business in your location, such as how to file for a license if you choose to have an in-person office. A client’s financial activities will include all transactions related to their income and expenses and a bookkeeper is responsible for recording all of these transactions accurately. Some bookkeepers may also have to facilitate financial transactions and ensure  transactions are legally compliant. Therefore, there are often opportunities opening up for in-house bookkeepers, remote bookkeepers, or freelance bookkeepers. Bookkeeping is a great place to start if you’re hoping for a way to break into the finance industry.

Transitioning from bookkeeping to accounting roles

A bookkeeper is responsible for recording transactions into the system, which is part of the wider and more general practice of accounting. A bookkeeper can expect to earn a salary in the range of $30,000-$60,000 a year in the US. However, compensation will widely vary depending on the employer, location, and candidate experience. Bigger companies tend to offer better compensation for bookkeepers; this is largely due to the increased volume of transactions and data.

  • You can learn bookkeeping for free and at a low cost through online courses.
  • Keeping the books is just one of the tasks modern bookkeepers might handle.
  • Accountants use the records a bookkeeper provides and their own expertise to help build budgets, assess finances, and make business decisions.
  • If you are proficient and comfortable using mathematics and computing figures, plus punctual, organized, and detail-oriented, it is not hard to learn how to be a bookkeeper.
  • You’ll also explore how to become one and find suggested cost-effective courses that can help you gain job-relevant skills today.

Some bookkeepers, however, are actually involved in strategy development. Keeping the books is just one of the tasks modern bookkeepers might handle. Many of the processes, policies, and procedures include detail-oriented four tax scams to watch out for this tax season tasks to ensure financial accuracy. Department of Labor’s Occupational Handbook, some of the most in-demand accounting jobs include comptroller, accounting manager, senior tax accountant, and internal auditors.

What jobs can you get with a bookkeeping certificate?

A bookkeeper’s role at a company varies by the size and nature of the business. At a very small company without an accountant, the bookkeeper’s duties are likely to be extensive. Today, this is done best through the use of cost effective software such as QuickBooks from Intuit. Modern accounting software is the repository of all financial transactions for your company and can generate requisite reports in real-time. So even if you have accounting software, odds are, you still need a bookkeeper to manage the software, enter data, file reports, identify errors and keep everything current.

What Is Bookkeeping? Everything You Need To Know

Start building the professional skills you need to get a job as a bookkeeper in under four months with the Intuit Bookkeeping Professional Certificate on Coursera. Double-entry bookkeeping records all transactions twice, usually a debit and a credit entry. Typically, double-entry bookkeeping uses accrual accounting for liabilities, equities, assets, expenses and revenue. A small business can likely do all its own bookkeeping using accounting software. Many of the operations are automated in the software, making it easy to get accurate debits and credits entered.

Technical bookkeeping skills

There are many opportunities to work in a salaried position from home to gain on-the-job training. The Intuit Tax and Bookkeeping Talent Community is a great place to find remote bookkeeping jobs and access training material. When a bookkeeper wants to leap to being an accountant, they will need to take the CPA exam, plus earn a bachelor’s degree (most of the time), if they do not have one already. Fifty states plus the District of Columbia require accountants to earn 150 credit hours of college education before taking the national four-part Uniform CPA exam.

A (very) brief history of bookkeepers

The two foundational tasks in small business bookkeeping are data entry and bank reconciliation. Let’s walk through the core duties, common additional duties, and advanced bookkeeping. Most remote QuickBooks Live bookkeepers work from home which means you need a reliable hard-wired internet connection and a landline phone. Intuit will provide a laptop with all the technology and software required to meet your responsibilities.

If you’re thinking about hiring a bookkeeper or want to clean up your business books, there are different bookkeeping types that can suit your needs. That said, bookkeeping is more than just dropping numbers into a spreadsheet—it takes meticulous analysis and just enough legal know-how. After all, bookkeepers will help you survive an audit by making sure your financial records are in order and your deductions are legal.

0 Comment on this Article

Add a comment