Separate cash handlers. Be sure that the person who accepts cash isn’t also recording the transaction.

Having an accountant on a monthly basis may seem expensive, but it means peace of mind: all you need to do is send your paperwork and everything will be taken care of. You won’t have to worry about your company’s accounts and you know exactly how much it costs.

John A. Tracy, CPA, is professor of accounting, emeritus, at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Earlier in his career, he was a staff accountant with Ernst & Young. There’s a little bit of learning involved that will make getting to grips with bookkeeping much easier in the long run. To help, we’ve listed the most basic types of bookkeeping you should know below.

Lita Epstein, MBA, is the author of more than 35 books, including Bookkeeping For Dummies and Reading Financial Reports For Dummies. If you have enthusiasm, patience, and time then your answer should be yes to doing it yourself to start with! You might also be motivated by your desire to keep your costs down. However, for most companies just starting out will be towards the bottom end of that scale as the price will only rise as your transactions become more complex and numerous.But then you realize you need to decide one more thing: how to deal with accounting and bookkeeping. However, it is slow and needs you to be pretty good with numbers and detail-oriented. Otherwise, mistakes can be costly, especially if your company is audited. Although it is not exactly environmentally friendly, photocopying receipts and statements to put them in different filing categories could save you time in the future if you are looking for them. Put aside time to do your bookkeeping Accountants and bookkeepers can charge anything from a couple of hundred pounds to several thousand pounds for annual accounts to be prepared. You can see the average accountancy costs for limited companies here.

When a worker makes a sale, they post the transaction and customer number. Then you can generate financial reports to see which customers generate the most revenue. The na_srp cookie is used to recognize the visitor upon re-entry. It allows to record details on user behaviour and facilitate the social sharing function provided by Addthis.com. She designs and teaches online courses on topics such as investing for retirement, getting ready for tax time and finance and investing for women. She’s written over 20 books including Reading Financial Reports For Dummies and Trading For Dummies. Get Familiar With Bookkeeping Terms and Phrases: Remember that glossary we told you to bookmark? Now is an excellent time to sit down, read and understand the terms and phrases. It’ll give you a better idea of what to expect and what things mean in bookkeeping.Every business has three key financial parts that you, as the bookkeeper, must keep in balance: assets, liabilities, and equity. Following are the descriptions of these three terms: From balance sheets to income statements, there’s no denying that there are new terms and phrases you’ll come across. In practice, they’re quite easy to understand once the terms are broken down into much simpler definitions.