Bookkeepers are leading the way in remote and telecommuting positions. Today I wrote down everything I’m trying to accomplish in the next few hours before I pick my kids up from school.
Have you wondered what exactly a bookkeeper does each month? Well, in this article, I share with you my daily work-from-home schedule as a bookkeeper and go through two of my bookkeeping clients’ workloads. I’ll show you how I input checks, categorize expenses, record income, and more. There are several aspects of daily bookkeeping tasks. How to prioritize tasks on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis.
But doing it yourself may not always be a better option. A professional bookkeeping service like Meru Accounting is always at your service. This to-do list is fairly typical for my work day.
Some bookkeepers love having a planner or an online task manager for their to-do lists, and that is perfectly fine too. I’ve compiled a few days of work for you so you can get a good glimpse of how I set up my bookkeeping work. You’ll talk to customers, vendors, and even employees within your company daily. You’ll attend meetings and discuss reports about the finances of the business.
- Keeping track of which account each transaction goes into will be very important.
- You will have receipts, invoices, reports, and other documents that get filed away.
- Then, once the check gets cashed, I see it in the QB “bank feeds” and I make sure the two match.
- I usually do some client work and then some odds and ends, such as getting back to people and doing tasks for my own business.
She is a florist, and I wanted to separate her flower costs from her basic tools, such as vases and clippers. You’ll need to make regular reports about cash flow to the company managers. The future looks bright for bookkeeping careers, too. The payroll and bookkeeping market was soaring high in 2018. It’s valued at a whopping $98.7 billion in the United States alone. Times are changing, and traditional 9-5 jobs are a thing of the past.
Quarterly Bookkeeping task:
You’ll be responsible for keeping track of all your organization’s financial transactions. Here’s a look at some tasks a typical day as a bookkeeper may include. On the profit and loss statement, it will record the income, each employee, how much they made, and the total income for the company. What this does is give the owner more capability to see what each person is making within the firm. I’ve mentioned before that I try not to deal too much with paper, but from this client in particular, I get these paper check stubs once a month.
In the chart of accounts, usually these are together, but I prefer to separate them. I do this because I think of office supplies as pencils, pens, staplers, and so on, but software seems like a different category to me. This is a personal preference, but I just wanted to share what I do in case it helps clarify anything for you. I categorized all of the expenses on both her bank account and her credit card.
Bookkeeper Job Description – Day in the Life of a Bookkeeper
There are probably around 60 checks I need to input for him, and that is fairly typical each month. I usually go into the office once a month to pick them up, otherwise they will occasionally drop them off for me. Meru accounting provides curated bookkeeping solutions specific to the clients’ needs. As a business owner, you have a few more important things to handle than bookkeeping. Bookkeeping is the routine task of recording every financial transaction of the business and maintaining the books of account. Undoubtedly efficient bookkeeping is essential to track the movement of funds in and out from the firm.
After I categorized her transactions, I pulled up her profit and loss for the year. Because this is a fairly small business, I clicked on the dollar amount in each of the categories to see what was contained in that category. I made sure everything made sense and that nothing seemed to be categorized wrong. I also split out the office supplies from the office software supplies.
Organizing chart of accounts
Bookkeeping may even offer you an opportunity to work from home. It’s a fresh career with lots of job opportunities. They also may do payroll checks for the employees within their company. Once everything feeds in from the bank, I go through the ledger and make sure it matches up with the deposits. The first thing I do is put the check into QuickBooks. Then, once the check gets cashed, I see it in the QB “bank feeds” and I make sure the two match.
- What this does is give the owner more capability to see what each person is making within the firm.
- Another part of accounts activity is maintaining records and files.
- This is how you make sure all the transactions are accurate.
- How to prioritize tasks on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis.
- There are many things one must navigate to stay on top of your accounting records thus, having a bookkeeping task list or checklist will come to the rescue.
- She is a florist, and I wanted to separate her flower costs from her basic tools, such as vases and clippers.
I had everything feeding into QuickBooks all year because that’s how I had it set up in the past. You’ll enter daily transactions for customer accounts and internal accounts. These transactions include things like sales, expenses, and payments. Keeping track of which account each transaction goes into will be very important.
Morning Working Time – Yearly Bookkeeping for a Client
Bookkeepers cut and mail checks to vendors for purchases. These could be for supply orders, services or even office expenses. My client receives money from his own clients, but he wants to also keep track of what each employee is making per client.
He uses a paper ledger to keep track of this and records each employee’s name, how much they made, and which client it was for. Throughout the morning I was working on QuickBooks Online, doing the yearly bookkeeping for one of my small clients. She doesn’t hire me every year to do her books, but she did hire me for this year and last. If so, a career in bookkeeping may be right for you.
I usually do some client work and then some odds and ends, such as getting back to people and doing tasks for my own business. For this client I send a profit and loss statement each month as well as one for the past three months so he can see month-to-month how the company is doing. This client has a fairly typical set up for small businesses. She has one bank account and one credit card to keep track of.
It may be a physical filing system, or you will scan and file them electronically. As a bookkeeper, you’ll be responsible for tracking them with computerized software. Before I connect them to the bank feed, I want to input each check first because it makes the process much easier.
Bookkeeping – It’s a Great Career
Her business is small enough that she is fully capable of doing that as a business owner. For this client, I plan to reconcile her bank account at the beginning of the year and again at the end. This is a process in QuickBooks where you check that your records match what is in the bank. For bigger clients I would do this monthly, but for this client, just once a year is sufficient (all the months are reconciled at the same time). There are many things one must navigate to stay on top of your accounting records thus, having a bookkeeping task list or checklist will come to the rescue. It takes organization and detail to be a bookkeeper.
