What is a Bookkeeper and What Do They Do?

What is a Bookkeeper?

In simple terms, a Bookkeeper is defined as someone who keeps and maintains the financial records for an individual or company. 

A bookkeeper can have various titles and roles such as a Full-charge Bookkeeper, which is a bookkeeper who fully maintains the financial records from beginning to end, which include posting transactions to the general ledger, reconciling accounts, billing, invoicing, processing payroll, creating financial reports, and filing the companies taxes at year-end to name a few. 

There are also Accounts Payable and Receivable Specialists who handle specific transactions that include billing, whereas they would make payments to vendors on behalf of the company or they may handle the invoicing for clients by creating and sending invoices to collect payment on behalf of a company. 

A company may also look to hire a Data-Entry Bookkeeper who is in charge of posting financial transactions into the accounting systems, such as invoices, bills, and financial statements.

What does a Bookkeeper Do?

A bookkeeper's main job is to ensure that a company’s financial records are up-to-date, organized, and accurate. 

This may be done with a multitude of different tasks that include classifying transactions so each expense, transfer, and deposit is coded correctly into the accounting system. Reconciling the bank accounts, assets, liabilities, and equity accounts are also important tasks to ensure each transaction is accounted for and that there are no errors in financial reporting. 

Once a bookkeeper has completed the bookkeeping for the month, they may then present financial statements to the business owner that include but aren’t limited to: the Balance Sheet, Profit and Loss statement, and Cash Flow statement. Once the financial statements are received, the business owner can take advantage of the numbers and use them to make important business decisions regarding their finances.

Although these are only a few of the many key tasks that a bookkeeper may have, we can see that the job of a bookkeeper is an important aspect in maintaining and running a business.