Learning to keep a business's books

by Lesley Sampson Freelance Writer

Bookkeeping is a growing profession, and good practitioners are in high demand. In order to do the job well, you will need to get to understand how a business works, and then be able to provide accurate figures which can be used to measure how well it is performing against its objectives.

Because it is an analytical profession there are no age bars to entry into bookkeeping. It works on principles established more than 500 years ago by a Cistercian monk, Luca Pacioli. He devised the system known as double-entry bookkeeping, which is regarded as an international standard. This means that anyone with a reputable bookkeeping qualification should be able to find work anywhere in the world.

The administration of training and qualifications in bookkeeping is carried out by the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers (ICB), which ensures the consistency of standards around the world, and helps achieve this by accrediting a range of training courses and resources.

Bookkeepers can go on to learn a variety of associated skills once they have picked up the basic needs of the business. They can specialise in areas such as VAT, or purchase taxes in other countries outside the UK, helping people who have to do so fill in a self-assessment tax return, aiding with the drawing up of cashflow forecasts, and drawing up accounts on behalf of someone who runs a business as a sole trader.

With the obligation on all businesses to keep records detailing their income and expenditure, bookkeeping is a highly valued skill. At its most basic level, it involves keeping a written record of all the transactions carried out in the name of a business. At one time, this was all done manually, but these days there is a wide range of proprietary computer software available to help with the task. And it is the learning of how this software works which is one of the primary components of any icb bookkeeping course.

The first objective for anyone entering the bookkeeping business is to learn the basic terms used in the job, such as accounts payable, balance sheet and income statement. If you have a friend who already has some knowledge of the job, they will be happy to explain the fundamental principles of basic bookkeeping.

When you are looking for training courses in the field of bookkeeping, you should be sure to check first of all which computer software package it will train you in. Sage and QuickBooks are among the most common platforms available – the former claiming to be the choice of more than 80 per cent of businesses - and your skills will be in greater demand if you gain your grounding in one of these systems.

If you want to keep your running costs low when you are setting up your own business, you can help do this by learning bookkeeping alongside the other work in which you specialise, as this will mean that you will not have to employ someone specifically to ensure that all of your accounts are kept in order. And the good thing about learning bookkeeping and applying those skills for a specific company is that, once you have become versed in the particular methods it uses, you can become highly effective and useful in the job, thereby increasing your chances of being given extra responsibility, and with it, more pay.

SOURCES:

http://www.ehow.com/how_2071211_learn-bookkeeping-skills.html

http://www.bookkeepers.org.uk/