Introduction
Running a business involves creative ideas and delivering top products or services. At the center of any successful business is financial management. However, tracking all transactions, processing payrolls, and ensuring that all accounts are accurate becomes an overwhelming task and particularly sticky when you’re growing the business. That’s when assistant bookkeeper duties save the day.
The assistant bookkeepers allow you to maintain books and a financially organized business by conducting routine financial operations. Through this blog, I take you through the key assistant bookkeeper duties that facilitate smooth financial operations and enable business owners to make informed decisions. As a small business owner or managing a growing company, it’s a game-changer when you understand what assistant bookkeepers do.
Managing Daily Transactions
One of the fundamentals of an assistant bookkeeper’s duties is managing daily transactions of sales, expenses, payments, etc.
Sales Entries:
Every sale, either in product or service, must be represented correctly and recorded. This means your financial reports reflect real-time business performance.
Expense Tracking:
Assistant bookkeepers will record all business expenses according to the nature of the office stationery to utility bills and make sure that all outgoing payments are captured correctly and classified.
Bank Deposits and Withdrawals:
Assistant bookkeeper duties include keeping track of all inflow and outflow in your business’s account. This keeps the cash flow transparent, and thus there is no discrepancy with your records.
While organizing such daily transactions, your bookkeeper assistant sets the groundwork for even more complex management-such as budgeting and even forecasting.
Data Entry and Record-Keeping
Undoubtedly, among the most important roles assistant bookkeeper duties is one in which reliable and prompt data entry earns top billing. A credible assistant bookkeeper has to ensure that all the financial data has correct and accurate entry and storage in the proper software or filing system.
Inputting Invoices and Receipts:
From vendor bills to customer receipts, your bookkeeper assistant inputs all the financial documents on the accounting software, to ensure all the amounts tally with what is indicated on the invoices.
Keeping Financial Records:
The records stay organized and accessible. They can be both paper versions or even digital files; keeping them orderly makes tax time and audits so much easier to work through.
Updating Financial Systems:
An assistant bookkeeper also updates the accounting software so that all of your transactions have an appropriate category. Such updating serves as a prerequisite for generating proper financial reports, which I’ll discuss later.
Accurate data entry is extremely crucial; even minute errors in this regard can propagate to much larger errors further down the line, making the function of an assistant bookkeeper quite valuable.
Reconciling accounts
Reconciliation is a very important task in maintaining accounts, and it forms part of the most accurate assistant bookkeeper duties. Essentially, reconciliation is a process whereby one compares both the internal records of financial implications and statements from outside sources, for instance, the bank and the vendors, to ascertain that all is well.
- Bank Reconciliations:
Your assistant bookkeeper will check internal cash records against your bank statement, ensuring everything balances. When discrepancies come up, they’ll investigate and resolve them to ensure proper reporting of your finances.
Similar to reconciliations in the bank, business expenses incurred on credit cards will have to be matched with receipts and statements. An assistant bookkeeper can handle this reconciliation process so that duplicate charges or unrecognized payments do not occur.
- Vendor Reconciliation:
Being aware of your outstanding amounts as reflected in vendor-invoice-oriented records will save you from delay charges and possible disputes. Your assistant bookkeeper can trace these accounts so that payments are made on time and accurately.
Reconciling accounts can help the assistant bookkeeper avoid shockers and convey the actual position of your company to you.
Payroll Assistance
Assistant bookkeeper duties shine in payroll processing. Payroll management is, of course, more than managing payrolls efficiently and effectively. The key to keeping it at a high level for employees and labor law compliance is effective management.
Calculating and processing wages:
An assistant bookkeeper will calculate wages properly so they can get them paid on time to employees. Any withholdings for tax, benefit, or other purposes will be managed.
Tracking Hours and Overtime:
Assistant bookkeepers are often responsible for ensuring hours worked by employees are tracked and overtime is captured, so payroll can accurately reflect this. They review the timesheets prepared and make pay adjustments when necessary.
Payroll Taxes:
As part of processing payroll, assistant bookkeepers also can help manage payroll tax-related activities by tracking withholdings and making payroll tax payments on time.
With proper payroll management, your business will avoid costly penalties and employees will stay happy knowing they are getting paid exactly to the coin and exactly on time.
Accounts Payable/Receivable Management and Invoicing
One of the critical components of assistant bookkeeper functions is accounts payable and accounts receivable management, as well as invoicing. The first step for healthy cash flow is always being up-to-date on whom the business owes money to or owes money.
Creating and Sending Invoices:
You can benefit from making and sending invoices if your business requires your company to charge customers. Bookkeeping assistant duties involve creating invoices and mailing them to customers so that they are timely, correct, and received by customers so you can get paid for your products or services.
Tracks payments:
When the assistant bookkeeper is done with sending out invoices, they have to follow through on all of them and ensure that every single one of their clients pays off their balance. They will keep records of what was paid and what wasn’t.
Keeping Track of Bills and Payments:
Working in accounts payable for your books, assistant bookkeepers maintain your company’s bills while paying them on time before the end of the due period so that you avoid paying late fees or losing service altogether.
The assistant bookkeeper keeps you up-to-date with your AP and AR, and this keeps the cash flowing well so that there is no worry of delayed payment or lost-in-posted invoices.
Financial Report Preparation
Creating accurate financials:
Creating financial reports is the most important job of an assistant bookkeeper. Correct reports help to make the right decisions for the growth of the company.
Profit and Loss Statements:
A P&L statement is necessary to get the revenue and losses information of the company. Your assistant bookkeeper can make a P&L report so that you know if your business is profitable or not.
Balance Sheets:
A balance sheet is aware of the current assets and liabilities of your business. This report is used to evaluate the financial health of your firm.
Cash flow statements:
Knowing how cash is entering and leaving your business is of paramount importance to utilize in financial planning. With a cash flow prepared by your assistant bookkeeper, you will be able to predict the future needs of your cash flow and avert shortfalls.
Such information is quite relevant for strategic business decisions, applications for loans, or preparation for the tax season. Having accurate and up-to-date financial reports will make you even better equipped to make decisions based on pertinent data factors for long-term success.
Tax Compliance Support
Although assistant bookkeeper duties are not to keep tax accounts, they have an important responsibility to ensure that all the records of your financial activities are accurate and easily available when tax time comes. This will make it easy preparation with an accurate and timely filing of taxes for your accountant or tax professional.
Financial documentation:
Your assistant bookkeeper will collect and sort all documents you will need for tax preparation-from receipts to invoices, bank statements, and more.
An assistant bookkeeper also keeps track of deductible expenses a business may incur and that can thus be written off during tax season, hence saving the business lots of money. They keep and categorize such expenses all through the year to make tax preparation much smoother.
Helping with Quarterly Taxes:
If your business filing is done quarterly, an assistant bookkeeper would be able to assist in gathering all the necessary documents and in preparing the filings for your accountant.
When assistant bookkeeper duties are performed by your VA, tax season doesn’t seem as worrying, and the chance of committing a mistake during filing becomes almost minimal.
Conclusion
Regardless of the size of your business, well-managed and organized business finances are always necessary. By performing assistant bookkeeper duties like managing your transactions, reconciliation of accounts, processing payroll, and finally generating financial reports, your bookkeeper ensures running smooth finances in your operations. The assistant bookkeeper’s work frees your time because it also helps you with the kinds of financial insights that make proper business decisions.
If you wish to manage your business’s finances and free up more time in the aspect of growth, then hiring an assistant bookkeeper will be an excellent first step. Tasks Expert provides you with professional virtual assistants that will manage all your financial needs and keep your business very well-organized and financially fit.
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Tasks Expert offers top-tier virtual assistant services from highly skilled professionals based in India. Our VAs handle a wide range of tasks, from part time personal assistant to specialized services like remote it support services, professional bookkeeping service etc. Furthermore, it helps businesses worldwide streamline operations and boost productivity.
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