One of the things all business owners should have some inkling about is how to do their bookkeeping. Not that this is meant to be a replacement for actual bookkeepers. It’s simply that knowing the ins-and-outs of how bookkeeping works can help you better grasp how your business is doing financially rather than relying on someone else to tell you that—the bookkeeper’s role is to free up your time by taking on the task that you could otherwise do.
The obvious method would be to take lessons on bookkeeping. These could range from professional courses to college attendance but considering the time commitment and costs these can be less than ideal. So that leaves the option of self-education.
Self-education essentially means that you’ll teach yourself the ins-and-outs of how it works on your own time and at your own pace. Because you dictate how and when you learn, you have the ultimate freedom in what you learn and can arrange for things to work out when more convenient for yourself. However, before you say it is easier to take the option to teach yourself, there are some downsides.
For starters, having the ultimate authority to decide when you teach yourself means that it can easily fall low on your list of priorities. While you may be earnest in your desire to learn, there are too many ways that you can end up distracted or just too preoccupied to teach yourself. And once you get off-track, it becomes much harder to get back on the self-taught path.
And then there’s the fact that you’ll be responsible for procuring your educational materials. This is easier said than done. The principles of bookkeeping have been largely established since ancient times, but as industries have blossomed and grown more numerous, some have specific rules and categories that you will need to know about—something that happens to be harder to get information on without a lot of digging.
Last, there will be no one to oversee your work. What that means is that you will be responsible for everything that happens, so if you make a mistake no one will be able to correct you. By the time you need to do reconciliations and get ready for tax season, you might find out that you’ve done more damage to your business than if you hadn’t.
Yet, despite this, it is still work attempting to learn bookkeeping in your own free time because the benefits outweigh the negatives. Keep learning whenever you can but find a supportive bookkeeper who will take the time to verify your work now and again. And once you do have enough time and resources, a couple of courses wouldn’t hurt either to make sure you are on the right track.
We’ll provide more bookkeeping advice here on our blog, so feel free to subscribe and keep up to date. And don’t be afraid to Contact Us if you want our assistance in doing your bookkeeping. After all, we exist to help keep your books in the black.
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