Small Business Bookkeeping & Accounting

Small Business
Bookkeeping & Accounting

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Introduction

Assume that you are sitting down to do your monthly bookkeeping. It is a day slightly past the end of the month you are doing the books for - say, the tenth. You paid as many bills as you could before the end of last month, you've received most bills you're going to get and - you're ready to do the monthly accounting.

In this walk-through guide we'll cover the activities associated with your monthly accounting, section by section. We'll include a description of what you'll be doing as well as why you're doing it. We'll also include an explanation of the "debits & credits" in this guide, but as we've noted in a prior section, if you are using an accounting software application, the debits & credits are generally taken care of for you -- at least until you have to record journal entries, etc. So our approach will be based on a "semi-manual" set of books so that you learn more about the "why" -- this will make the job easier in the long run and provide you with a better foundation for really using your monthly financial statements.