BOOKKEEPING

All types of businesses must record their profits and losses in a legal way. Bookkeepers are the professionals responsible for this process. In every country, official organizations make sure that profits are correctly entered in the appropriate books.

In order to have clear records of the money that is used to purchase what is necessary for the business and the money that is earned with every sale, bookkeepers record all this information in special called JOURNALS. In the journal they record the dual effect of every transaction. Later on, these temporary records are entered in a LEDGER. Debits are entered on the left-hand side and credits are entered on the right-hand side. This is the basis of the double entry system, the modern method of bookkeeping. Each account has two sides, a debit side and a credit side, and each transaction is entered twice, as a debit in one account and as a credit in the other. The rule is debit the receiver, credit the giver. Every debit must have a corresponding credit and vice versa. The total of all the debits must equal the total off all the credits. By this simple check, mistakes can be quickly found and corrected. These records provide the Basic information from which a profit and loss account and balance sheet are prepared at the end of the fiscal year. All the totals are transferred to the profit and loss account, and a balance is made to verify whether both columns match.

When a sale takes place, the seller sends an invoice, that is a request of payment, to the buyer or customer. Invoices are generally done in triplicate copies: one for the customer, one for the sales department and one for the accounting departament.

Nowadays, bookkeeping is not necessarily done in “books”. Most of these records are done in computer files. Nevertheless, a print of all the information is kept as a backup in case something goes wrong with the computerised information.