What Does a Bookkeeper Do

When managing your business, you may be considering the benefits of having a bookkeeping and accounting service. Even if you have taken a course yourself, having someone else take on the workload can be a huge help. So if you are on the fence about whether or not you should hire a bookkeeper, consider these ten things you may not have known a bookkeeper could do for your business.

1. A bookkeeper can prepare Notice to Reader (NTR) financial statements

The statements and compilation agreement (or NTR) which can be required before a small business corporate tax return can be prepared by a competent bookkeeper on behalf of the tax filer to ease the tax season workload. Note that a bookkeeper is not necessarily CPA designated, so the NTR would not be prepared to CPA standards unless overseen by a CPA.

2. A bookkeeper can file tax remittances

Bookkeepers can file sales taxes (GST, PST and HST) and payroll taxes on behalf of corporations. It is not uncommon for bookkeepers to file the in-year taxes.

3. A bookkeeper can do year-end adjustments

Most often, after a corporate tax accountant prepares the year-end financial statements, NTR and tax filing, he/she will prepare a set of adjusting entries as part of the year-end package. These adjusting entries are to account for differences in accounting for things like inventory that have specific accounting rules and must be reconciled with inventory counts. A bookkeeper can enter these adjusting entries into the books.

4. A bookkeeper can file taxes

Technically a bookkeeper can file your T2 tax return. Again this is usually done by a qualified CPA accountant.

5. A bookkeeper can participate in building a business plan

We have talked about the importance of business plans in previous Entreflow blog posts, so to perform this annual task, you can involve your bookkeeper in pulling reports from your accounting software if you don’t have a financial analyst or CFO available.

6. A bookkeeper can help implement an accounting software

It’s best to find an implementation specialist to do your accounting software setup or small business ERP setup. Since your bookkeeper has first hand experience with entering transactions and gathering data from the business, they can be an important part of the requirements gathering and software evaluation process.

7. A bookkeeper can perform a preliminary audit

Instead of having an auditor come in for the preliminary audit, your on-hand bookkeeper can complete this task if they’ve been part of an audit before.

8. A bookkeeper can help select apps for business functions

Along with general accounting software, a bookkeeper is capable of knowing which support applications will expedite workflow in other areas like time tracking, marketing, and other specialties specific to your business.

9. A bookkeeper can perform HR functions

If you are a smaller business and not yet in need of a full-time human resources representative or HR consultant, your bookkeeper may be trained to handle employee onboarding to payroll and other basic HR admin functions.

10. A bookkeeper can represent a business with tax agencies such as CRA

Dealing with the CRA can be a hassle, especially for the full time owner of the business. So, you can easily assign authority to your bookkeeper to directly deal with the CRA.

Even if you already have a bookkeeper, you may not be using them to their full potential. Instead of hiring on a secondary person to ease issues around the office, take into account these additional areas in which your bookkeeper can legally act.