Bookkeeper
Career information and advice on being a Bookkeeper

A Bookkeeper keeps the financial accounts for all the financial aspects of a clients’ or company’s account. This ranges from daily ledger entries, financial forecasting, salary and Tax accounts, as well as investments and sound financial planning.

You could work for a large company or as part of a team of Bookkeepers, who work to assist qualified Accountants.

As a Bookkeeper, your clients could include private individuals, small businesses or you could work for a private Accountant.

As a Bookkeeper you may also want to specialise in one particular area of accounting, such as Mergers and Acquisitions or Corporate Tax.

Bookkeeper functions include

You could work as part of an Accounts Team in a large company or as the sole provider of services. Your functions would normally include processing and paying invoices as well as recording receipts and payments.

You would be expected to prepare and check ledger balances as well as other monthly and yearly accounts such as submitting tax returns and monitoring expenses.

As you gain more experience you may be asked to draft financial reports, budget control and assisting the qualified Accountants with Audits.

You could be asked to draw up financial statements such as profit and loss statements, balance sheets and payrolls. You could also be expected to estimate the costs of new projects and review budgets and investments.

Another function could include meeting with clients and collecting information from them in order to prepare their books. You would be expected to audit their tax records and check and complete the client’s tax returns.

A major area of work would be keeping abreast of the latest tax law to ensure you maximise profit and reduce tax costs to the company.