Why Do I Need A Bookkeeper?

Business and the Bookkeeper

My favorite part of the Beauty and the Beast movie is when Beast takes Belle to show her the library. All

the books were arranged so neatly from the top of the amazingly high ceiling right down to the bottom.

I have always dreamed of owning a library like that. Growing up, we had two big bookshelves that were

filled with books (and of course the medicine basket and a few other oddities that always seemed to

find their way there), nothing compared to that. Granted a whole section was reserved for medical

books but we also had several sets of encyclopedias and some pretty interesting reads.

I remember the day my dad came home, and I came out from my room to welcome him as usual. Right

next to his chair in the living room was this humongous box filled with books of all assortments. It was a

whole list of books from all the African literature authors and of course another set of encyclopedias.

That has always been one of my favorite memories, very close to my Christmas memories. To me, it was

as close to magic as I could ever get. Imagine how my world revolved around books for the next portion

of my life.

I believe that the day Beast took Belle to the library and gave her access to it was the day Belle began to

fall in love with the Beast. I feel like that gesture exposed her most to the humanness of the Beast than

even her rescue from the wolves. Afterall, our pets also have the natural tendency to come to our

defense when we are in danger.

The point I want to draw our attention to though is the view of that well organized library. Every single

book was in its place. There was a ladder to help you with the books that were out of reach, chairs and

tables with lamps in well situated places. Yup! It would have been my sanctuary if I had one. Nothing

seemed out of place. Neat, peaceful and entertaining. I bet it smelled nice too (going with my

imagination here). That must have revealed a side of the beast that Belle could identify with and related

to. It painted a picture of her that gave hope of what could be. All the possibilities that were out there

for the grabbing.

Imagine if Belle had walked into that same library and it had been in absolute chaos with dust covered

books lying all over the place and everything out of place. There is barely room to put your feet and you

must keep looking over your head for cobwebs and things that might be falling off crooked shelves or

from misplaced items. The room barely has any light in it, and you can smell the dampness and mold

from the door. I think ‘Beauty and the Beast’ would have likely had a different ending from the story as

we know it.

I now confess, I love order. I am the one who walks into a room and instinctively move to pick up the

candy strip lying on the floor or push the unoccupied chair back to its place on the table. I see every nail

on the sidewalk and I must pick it up. And yes, I am the one cleaning up the table and stacking the plates

in a restaurant while we have a conversation before the waiter comes round to get them. Granted, age

and experience has played a major role in teaching me when to restrain myself and know my place and

where I am before I make that move. Besides, living in a house with two teenagers and a toddler has

taught me that there is a time for everything otherwise you will never get to do anything else ever

except cleaning and putting things in order.

But back to order and what I am getting at. There is no place where order is an essential requirement for

growth than in business. You cannot grow a business without order. You cannot grow a business without

organized financial books. When I was a kid a had a fascination for retail traders. Especially, those who

owned stores and sold a wide range of items. I monitored their progress and growth and many of them

started small but grew up and expanded to open multiple stores. All the ones I monitored or observed

were family-owned stores managed by traders who had little or no formal education and yet they were

able to remain successful. Why? They may not have had any formal way of keeping their books, but they

certainly had order and planning and discipline and management that contributed to their success. They

all seemed to have a system where every family member was assigned a responsibility and relied upon

to carry play their role to the letter to make things work.

For majority of businesses that do not succeed, you will find that lack of order in their business was a

major contributing factor to their failure. So let’s go to why order is so important and try to relate it to

business.

WHAT HAS ORDER GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Order makes it possible to see. In an organized library, order helps you to move about easily. You know

which way to go, and you know how to get there. You can see where every book is without too much

effort ( I cannot help but mention that for some of us, order stops us from the sense of dizziness,

confusion and chaos that comes on us when we are in the middle of disorder). The same is in business.

When your books are in order you can visualize your business more clearly. You can see how well your

business is doing or how much work you need to put into it to make it better. You can see the

“cobwebs” those things that need to be cleaned and those things that are out of place so that you can

put them in the right place.

You can see what you have, you can see what you need. You can see what is causing a problem and

what is making your business grow. You can see if anything is not in its place, and you can see clearly

where it actually needs to be.

Order helps you to know what you have and what you do not have. If you need a specific book to

complete a collection you will not know that you need it if you don’t know that you don’t have it.

Businesses can easily find themselves in a position where they have something missing at the exact

moment when they need it, and this can cause missed opportunities that we sometimes never get back.

Whereas visualization grants you the gift of foresight where you could plan for something you will

definitely need in the future and work towards it.

Our financial books when kept in order can help us see how much cash we have, how much money we

need to spend on each area of the business, how much money we need to borrow without going

overboard and what direction we need to take the business in.

As a bookkeeper, I am utilizing the accounting guidelines and principles to help keep my clients’ books in

order. These are accounting guidelines that help every business to maintain accounting standards

required by law. By doing this we can create a vision of their business that they can used to help them

take the required steps to get it to what it is meant to be.

Organizing money to where it is supposed to be tells the story of a business. A wise business owner

would like to know what story his business is tell. They would want to know where the story needs a

tweak or a change to show how things are done or when things are done. It doesn't help either if things

are not organized properly. That is still disorganized. In fact, disorganized things can pose a far greater

danger than absolute chaos because you are taking the wrong information to run with. This means the

true story is not told. Significant damage can be caused before you realize that you started with the

wrong foundation.

It probably would have made better sense and been much better if we dealt with physical cash all the

time in business. Then we can just put one bundle in one shelf and a few more in another shelf and label

the shelves with what they will be used for and then just take from each shelf when needed. But we all

know that is not the case. Even when we start with cash, as a business grows it is much safer to put your

money in a bank. Technology and current trends have made it so that there is now less need to work

with cash these days. Now we have credit and debit cards, bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo, Zelle and so

many other financial resources to manage payments and receipts of money without handling the cash.

The same applies for what we call business accounting (which is how we manage and plan the financial

part of business. Physical money is represented by numbers and shelves and boxes or categories are

represented by more numbers or just given names in software we use to manage our businesses. We

call those categories accounts and hence the name accounting. Those numbers used to represent

money is now organized to paint a picture that tells the story of your business.

That is what accountants and bookkeepers do. And then some. We start by helping you to put all those

numbers in order to show you how much you put into your business, how much you got in your

business, how much you spent in your business, and how much you have left. As simple as that sounds

so much comes into play because as we all know, so much more is involved in running a business.

Just as in a library you do more than just arrange the books, we must arrange the shelves and the

furnishing and the lamps and the décor and keep everything clean and tidy. That way, you don’t find

yourself slamming into a desk when you walk into the room or not having enough light for reading

because you are sitting to far from the lamp. Same goes for accounting books. Bookkeeping ensures that

money you received from selling your products, the money you spent, the money you did not spend, the

money you owe and the money you are owed are all accurate and can provide with the right

information.

THE ORDER OF THE BOOKKEEPER OR ACCOUNTANT

I have great admiration for architects. It fascinates me how they can come up with an idea of a project

then put that idea on paper, develop it into a design and then furthermore, create a model of exactly

what the want that project to look like so that it can be built just as they envisioned it. These days, they

even seem to have technology with software that can present them in pictures so you can see exactly

what you are dreaming of and what it looks like. Architecture is indeed a gift.

Businesses tend to follow the same process. Many of us have great stories of how our businesses came

to be. Most businesses come out of necessity. Necessity in the sense that there is a need that had to be

met with a product or service or the business owner had a need in their life that they met by starting the

business. We come up with great ideas and then begin to plan how we would execute these ideas. Most

times we envision what we would like the business to be like and how we want it to grow. We dream of

when our business will be great.

I have always wanted a business of my own, but I was happy to keep dreaming of a day when that would

be possible somewhere in the future until I found myself in a situation where something in my life

needed to give way. I needed more flexibility in my job to be able to maintain a stress free and flexible

lifestyle to fit my family’s routine. I realized that I did not like marketing or selling products, but I have

always wanted to help businesses grow and I loved numbers and making sense out of numbers. That

was how my bookkeeping business came to being.

Every business owner’s desire falls under making an impact or a difference in society, making money

(whatever the need for the money is) or being famous. Of course, we want our business to succeed. We

spend sleepless nights, burn candles at both ends, dedicate a lot of time and money, make significant

sacrifices and go to extreme circumstances to make sure our business succeeds. We pay coaches

substantial amounts of money to build us mentally and physically. We work on our personalities;

introverts venture of their shells, extroverts learn how to channel their outgoing nature, hermits

become door to door salesmen or cold callers, people who never bothered with a dictionary become

nerds, shy people become coaches and jumpsuit house sitters become fashion office executives.

I cannot proceed without mentioning the financial investment. The large amounts of money we borrow

or try to convince others to invest in our dreams. What about the outrageous amounts we sink into

marketing or social media or marketing consultants with the hope that we will eventually get some form

of return on our investments. Some of us would literally faint if we were watching ourselves through a

mirror and saw the amount of money that passed through our hands and we confidently sank into

something we believe in spite of what everyone around us thinks.

Everyone of those things is great if they bring out the best in us. I love hearing amazing success stories of

businesses that were started from scratch with barely anything to start with and became successes. I

could read those stories all day or watch the movies or listen to the business owners recount all they

went through to attain success. I dream of the day when I get to join that hall of fame and tell my own

story too.

No one goes through all this to so that their business will fail. In fact, the more we want our business to

succeed, the more we increase our investments in everyway we can.

All these investments are quantified in monetary terms. We make them because we know that they are

worthy investments, and our business will not go far or even make it without them. They are all vital for

the survival of the business.

So is the accounting part of the business. This is the aspect of the business that the bookkeeper falls

under. Accounting is an essential part of every business. Any business that wants to succeed must take

the accounting part of the business seriously. Any business that wants to succeed would know that they

cannot afford to entrust the accounting aspect of their business to just anyone.

Large businesses hire employees to manage their accounts. Depending on the size of the business, they

could have an entire team in charge of their accounts. Sometimes a team is just assigned to just one part

of accounting like accounts receivable in charge of receipts of the company or accounts payable in

charge of paying bills the company accrues. Some businesses invest an entire building for their

accounting department. Why? Because a vital part of the success of a business is the money. Great

investments are made into accounting in any business that wants to thrive. Sometimes even more focus

is given to accounting than marketing.

These days, a lot of attention is given to the marketing aspect of businesses and just as much financial

investment is made into business marketing. We hire business coaches, marketing strategists, pay and

subscribe for countless search engines, social media websites, and networking sites to help promote our

businesses because we understand how essential the investment is to the growth of the business and

how vital it is. Your Bookkeeping is just as vital as all the other investments you make.

This principle does not just apply to large businesses but for every business from its start or even its

planning. After all, large businesses had to start somewhere to grow to what they are and I can assure

you that the effort, commitment, consistency and investment they made into the accounting part of

their business is a major contributing factor to their growth and success. No business can thrive without

proper accounting and bookkeeping. Small or big.

When I walk into a gathering of business owners, or I meet a business owner and I introduce myself as a

bookkeeper, you can tell from the response who attaches value to the service that a bookkeeper

provides and who just sees a bookkeeper as a service they couldn’t possibly imagine they would have

need for.

When business owners who saw no need for a bookkeeper eventually realize how badly they need one,

some of them still approach the service from the view of the service just being an unnecessary expense

that they must suffer through. Many in this group begin the conversation with the question, “how much

do you charge for your bookkeeping?” And usually the approach is with caution and the notion to walk

away if the cost does not fall within the margins of what they consider ‘fair’ for the service.

On the other hand, the business owner who understands the need for a bookkeeper and what a

bookkeeper can do for business begins the same conversation with listing the needs of the business and

asking for help with the things that need to be done. In this case money is not usually the determinant

factor. Appreciation for the service of a bookkeeper reflects the depth a business owner is ready to go in

order to ensure that his business succeeds.

In all honesty, what I am talking about is not rocket science or a new discovery. In fact, some reading

this book would just go “yeah yeah yeah so what’s new? After all, this is the path every business needs

to take. It is common sense that if businesses require money in any form to survive and that it is money

that makes the world go round then proper management of money is part of business. Bookkeeping is

just as necessary as management, marketing, legal, computer technology, security and any other aspect

of business you may think of and even more necessary. So, the question arises, why would any business

want to sideline bookkeeping instead of treating it with the importance it deserves?

WHY IN THE WORLD WOULD I NEED A BOOKKEEPER

So what does a bookkeeper do? Why is a bookkeeper’s service so important for my business? What

difference does bookkeeping make in my business?

As mentioned earlier, bookkeeping is a game of numbers which represent money used in business.

Bookkeeping sets up your account, sometimes even having to clean it up first and then organizes your

money in order. While doing this, bookkeeping tells the story of your business by providing information

through the numbers in your business. Bookkeeping ensures that the story your accounts tell is the true

story of your business.

So, if you spent this amount on paper for the month in your business or your client paid an amount for

your products all that information should show by looking at your numbers. Or if you bought a truck or a

building for an amount of money the numbers show the value attached to them and how that affects

the value of your business. Bookkeeping tells shows you expenses that you could cut back on by

purchasing at a certain period or purchasing in bulk, or records of customers that are yet to pay you.

From your books you can tell how much your business is actually worth. You can tell if your business

operates at a profit or a loss. You can tell what you spend money the most on and if it is worth it or if

you could find an alternative at a lower cost that still maintains the same value. You can use your books

to look back into the past of your business and also to foresee the future. You can use your books to tell

how much inventory you have, what you are running short of, what you need to cut back on. You can

monitor your inventory to curtail theft.

Your books tell you how well your business is doing and show you areas of your business you can

improve on. They tell you what departments cost the most to run and how much difference the cost

makes in the amount of gain you make from it. Numbers help you to make plans, strategize, test and

experiment on the best ways to use your money to get the most productive outcome.

So you can see how the growth of your business or lack thereof can be controlled by how your business

accounts are maintained. In which case, a good business would give its accounts the maximum attention

and wouldn’t take its management for granted.

There is also the legal side of this. Countries have accounting standard boards that provide guidelines for

businesses on how to mange their finances. Rules have been established that govern accounting

practices. Failure to abide by those rules and guidelines can lead to fines that can be quite heavy and

sometimes even prison terms. The rules and guidelines nevertheless help businesses to maintain

integrity and stability. Accounting rules and guidelines help to curtail and detect mismanagement and

misappropriation of funds.

Accounting is also used by business managers to create business plans and projects. This year 2023,

based on economic projections of a possible recession in the nearest future, large companies like Google

and Microsoft have decided to put thousands of their employees out of jobs. This is a plan that is made

based on company projections of how they may fare during the recession and such moves are made in

anticipation of future struggles they may foresee their companies going through and an effort to protect

their interests so that they can come out strong at the other end.

Of course, the final main reason why most companies eventually seek the help with their accounting

and bookkeeping is for their taxes. Western countries require that taxes must be remitted to the

government. That is just the way the system functions. Every business that makes an income must remit

taxes. Tax evasion is a serious crime in the United States that can lead to fines and prison sentences. As

important and necessary as it is to pay taxes, every business owner and individual wants to pay just the

amount of tax and not a cent more.

Accounting and bookkeeping helps to provide all the information required for tax preparers and CPAs to

find ways through which taxes can be avoided and tax laws can be used to maximize tax deductions and

increase income after tax.

All these require accounting books be maintained properly.

TIME IS MONEY

Great business coaches and business advisors advise business owners to always find a bookkeeper to

maintain their books.

In the words of Jim Kaspari in his book “Gold Medal Business Marketing” he states

Bookkeeping is recording financial transactions of a business

Why?

Legal requirement

For Management

For taxes