As a new marketing and social media consultant at BudgetEase, the first question I asked myself was, “What is the difference between a bookkeeper and an accountant?” When looking at the basics of bookkeeping and accounting, they look like the same types of positions, but they are actually two positions with different functions.
Bookkeeping at its heart deals with organizing the financial information of an entity, in our case, small organizations. Bookkeeping, also referred to as record keeping, is viewed as a subset of accounting. Tasks of a bookkeeper include: Paying bills, preparing invoices, reconciling bank statements, preparing financial statements, and internal reports. The tasks are done day-to-day, week-to-week, or month-to-month. Bookkeeping is the finding, gathering, and organizing of a company’s financial information.
Accounting services for small businesses, on the other hand, is a much broader field. Accounting includes bookkeeping, creating controls on the bookkeeping system, preparing tax forms and analyzing the information based on the financial information you have gathered. Accounting deals more with financial reporting, that is an accountant values and measures the performance of a company’s finances.
The main difference between bookkeeping and accounting is that bookkeeping deals with organizing finances and accounting deals with analyzing finances. Accounting depends on the information gathered during the bookkeeping process, in order to make the correct judgments about a company’s finances. In our case, BudgetEase bookkeepers excel in setting up QuickBooks and providing the financial information the accountants need. Overall, bookkeepers and accountants make a good team.
References:
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/the-difference-between-bookkeeping-and-accounting.html
