Is a career in bookkeeping profitable? How much money can a person make if they become a bookkeeper? Are you looking for answers to these questions? You have come to the right place. In this blog, we discuss a bookkeeper’s job role, skills, and salary.

What Are The Duties of a Bookkeeper?

Bookkeepers Track Daily Transactions For Businesses

Bookkeepers use accounting software to track daily transactions. This includes monitoring all the incoming and outgoing expenses for a business. They also send invoices and categorise them to keep track of finances.

Bookkeepers not only help maintain the ledger of a business, but they also prepare reports highlighting the financial state of a business.

Bookkeepers Manage Cash Flow For Businesses

Maintaining the proportion of income to expenditure is an essential exercise for businesses. Bookkeepers play a crucial role in it. They help businesses maintain a positive cash flow to pay employees on time, buy new assets, and maintain better supplier relationships.

Bookkeepers Maintain Payroll For Businesses

Another essential duty of a bookkeeper is to manage the payroll for businesses. In this capacity, a bookkeeper needs to do timesheet maintenance and keep track of payroll-related and superannuation taxes and commission distribution. They also help in banking reconciliation, so employees are paid on time.

Bookkeepers Help Businesses Make Important Decisions

Most of the decisions business owners make directly or indirectly are related to their finances. For example, a business can only hire new people or buy more assets if its books allow it. Thus, a bookkeeper must keep an eye on the books to inform business owners of essential decisions.

Bookkeepers Help Gain Investors’ Trust

Businesses need a solid financial footing to get loans, equity, or investment. The first thing a bank or investor looks at is the books of a business. Thus, a bookkeeper must organise the books of a business in a systematic way that can earn the trust of investors. An ill-managed book looks terrible for both the business and the bookkeeper.

What Skills Does a Bookkeeper Require?

Building strong educational skills is a requirement of all careers; however, you also need some unique soft skills for each job. Now that you know the responsibilities of a bookkeeper, let us guide you toward the qualitative skills that can make a bookkeeper successful.

Strong Communication Skills

As a bookkeeper, you would work in a business’s finance department with people like accountants and other finance professionals. This means you need to work collaboratively. This requires you to have strong communication skills to clearly understand your company goals and what’s needed.

Attention to Details

As a bookkeeper, you would be required to handle lots of financial data daily. You cannot risk being non-attentive. If there is even a slight error in the financial information, it could cost a business a lot of money. With strong attention to detail, you can find out faults quickly that can help you fast-track your career.

Digital Knowledge

Bookkeepers often work with online accounting software and other digital tools. This requires you to possess good digital knowledge related to your trade. As technology progresses, there’s always something new in the financial market. You must keep up with the latest digital knowledge to stay ahead of other bookkeepers.

Strong Mathematics Skills

Although mathematics knowledge is a technical skill, we have mentioned it here as it’s also a skill that needs to be honed regularly to stay ahead of others. This will help you predict accurate financial figures for your employer. Maintaining correct statements and receipts are essential skills to progress as a bookkeeper.

Critical Thinking Skills

Analysing data and finding patterns can help you succeed as a bookkeeper, as businesses value people who can add more value through critical thinking.

Problem-Solving Skills

Another great skill to have to succeed as a bookkeeper is a problem-solving skill. You must help your employer find answers to their most complex financial challenges.

Basic Bookkeeping Skills

As a bookkeeper, it is important that you have your basic bookkeeping skills intact. This involves having a good grasp of accounts payable and accounts receivable, etc.

Time Management Skills

With bookkeeping tasks comes a deadline. You need to complete your work within a set time, which requires time management skills.

Data-Entry Skills

Although there is software to do data entry tasks now, you must have the skills to do manual data entry in case your employer needs it. It will also help you keep a tab on errors that may occur due to a technology error.

Integrity and Transparency

Discipline is a big part of a bookkeeper’s career. You must provide correct information to the government and your employer to be an ethical bookkeeper.

Salary of a Bookkeeper in The UK

Now that you know the skills and duties of a bookkeeper, you are ready to learn how much money you can make in this respectable profession. Here’s a breakdown for you.

In the UK, the national average salary of a bookkeeper is approximately £23,447 per year. Your salary will also depend upon your work experience and the size of the company you are working for.

If you are starting, you can make £22,234 per year as an assistant bookkeeper. This is an entry-level position. As you gain more professional experience, you can expect your salary to go up to £26,591 per year.

To Sum It Up

You can work as a freelance bookkeeper for different businesses at the same time and earn more money. However, it is difficult for us to give you an exact average salary for a freelancing professional. Bookkeeping is a respectable profession and pays a good wage. If you are interested in becoming a bookkeeper, you can check out our other blogs about bookkeeping.