Bookkeping

Bookkeeping is a necessary part of accounting. Bookkeepers are responsible for recording (or keeping) the financial that the accounting system processes.

Bookkeepers record every purchase and sale that a business makes, in the order that they take place, in journals. At a later date, these temporary records are entered in or posted to the relevant account book or ledger. Of course the “books” these days are likely to be computer files. At the end of an accounting period, all the relevant totals are transferred to the profit and loss account. Double-entry bookkeeping records the dual effect of every transaction - a value both received and parted with. Payments made or debits are entered on the left-hand (debtor) side of an account, and payments received or credits on the right-hand side. Bookkeepers will periodically do a trial balance to test whether both sides of an account book match. In most business prospectus the seller of goods or services sends the buyer a bill or invoice and later a receipt acknowledging payment. Businesses are obliged to retain the documents — known as vouchers— that support or prove an item in an account, and make them available to the internal and external auditors who check the accounts. Bookkeepers are not to be confused with librarians, who also keep books, or with bookmakers, who “make books” in the sense that they accept bets (on horse races, etc.) and traditionally wrote them down in a book like a bookkeeper’s journal.