In order to assess the important qualities that a bookkeeper should possess, let’s start by considering what a bookkeeper does.
As JRMA, we believe that your bookkeeping is the foundation for all your financial transactions and records.
Your bookkeeper will record and process all your routine financial transactions, such as sales invoices, purchase invoices, transactions in and out of the company bank, mileage records, expense claims and the company credit card. This is usually done using accounting software, such as Sage, Xero or Quickbooks. Having completed this processing, they will be able to run Aged Debtor and Aged Creditor reports from the software to show how much is owed from customers and how much is owed to suppliers, and to prepare and submit VAT returns.
So now that we know what a bookkeeper does in the business, what qualities should you look for when you are recruiting a new bookkeeper?
We have discussed above that the bookkeeping is the foundation, so they need to get things right. The financial records and reports are used to make key business decisions, so you need to certain that the information used to create those reports is accurate. For example, the aged creditors report is used to determine how much to pay your suppliers. If that is not accurate, you may pay suppliers too much or too little, or pay the wrong suppliers.
Your bookkeeper will need visibility of your detailed financial transactions. So you need to be able to trust them to keep these details confidential. In fact, many businesses will include a confidentiality clause within the employment contracts of their bookkeeping and accounting employees.
As well as the core activities described within the first paragraph, they may also undertake additional tasks like making supplier payments out of the company’s bank account. This will require them to have authority to access the business bank, so trustworthiness becomes of even greater importance in these cases.
And your bookkeeper might prepare the payroll, calculating how much is due to each employee, what deductions to make for PAYE, NIC and pensions, preparing the payslips and making the necessary returns to HMRC, and pension providers. Payroll is a sensitive and confidential area, and you need to be confident that your bookkeeper can be trusted not to divulge this information to others.
Accounting is a tidy discipline. Most bookkeepers enjoy the task of ticking, checking, matching, cross referencing and balancing.
The visible evidence that you might see that demonstrates these traits could be that they always have a tidy desk, and organised filing using all the files of the same colour, and the labels on the spine facing the same way, or with electronic filing, systematic folder and file names, and consistent use of lower case and upper case characters.
The less visible evidence of these organised traits is that your bookkeeper will be on top of their work. They will know all their deadlines, and they will reply to queries quickly and with confidence.
An interesting note is that generally, bookkeepers are good at, and enjoy, doing puzzles and jigsaws.
It is also worth mentioning that bookkeepers are actually known by a variety of different names. They might be referred to simply as the Accounts Department, or perhaps Sales Ledger and Purchase Ledger, or sometimes Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable or Credit Control. In smaller companies, bookkeeping is often combined with general admin tasks, or outsourced to self-employed individuals or specialist bookkeeping or accountancy practices. But whoever performs the role within your organisation, and whatever job title you give them, you should look for the qualities of accuracy, trustworthiness and organisation in your new recruits.
For more information, read our blog Why use a Local Bookkeeper, or get in touch to talk to us about how JRMA can assist with your bookkeeping needs, contact us here.
