Bookkeepers' Boot Camp by Angie Mohr

PART I: THE BASICS

1. Getting Started
The Numbers 101 For Small Business series
Bookkeepers' Boot Camp
How To Use This Book

2. A Brief Look At The Origins of Bookkeeping
Double-entry Bookkeeping

3. Important Concepts
Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP)
Stewardship
Accrual Accounting
Debits and Credits
Accountants Versus Bookkeepers
Accounting Jargon
The Use of Estimates
The Importance of Bookkeeping

4. Setting Up The Record Keeping System
What Kinds of Paper Do I Need to Keep?
How Do I Account For My Source Documents?
Where Do I Record This Information?
What Kind of Bookkeeping System Should I Get?

5. The Balance Sheet
The Purpose of The Balance Sheet
The Components of The Balance Sheet
Assets
Liabilities
Equity

6. The Income Statement
The Purpose of The Income Statement
What's On My Income Statement?
Interpreting The Income Statement
The Statement of Retained Earnings: A Tag-Along

7. The Cash Flow Statement
Categorizing Cash Flows
Back to The Balance Sheet: The Basis of The Cash Flow Statement
Putting It All Together
What Is The Cash Flow Statement Telling Me?

PART II: INTERMEDIATE TOPICS

8. Recording The Sales Cycle
What Makes Up The Sales Cycle?
Recording Cash Sales
Recording Credit Sales
Sales Discounts
Recording Cash Receipts
Preparing Invoices
Preparing Statements of Account
Bad Debts: Analyzing Them and Writing Them Off

9. Recording the Purchases Cycle
Purchasing Inventory
Purchasing Supplies
Common Cost of Goods Sold Categories
Common Expense Categories
Setting Up The Accounts Payable Sub-ledger
Cash Payments

10. Inventory
Inventory Tracking Systems
Types of Inventory
Inventory in a Manufacturing Environment
Inventory Costing Methods
Year End Valuation
Setting Up The Inventory Count

11. Capital Assets
What's In The Cost of My Capital Assets?
Depreciation: An Overview
Concepts Involved in Depreciation
Methods of Depreciation
Accounting For Depreciation
Accounting For Sales of Capital Assets

12. Leases and Loans
Lease Transactions: An Overview
Accounting For Operating Leases
Accounting For Capital Leases
Accounting For Loans
Reconciling The Loan Balance

13. Transactions Between The Company and Its Owners
Shareholder Loans
You Pay For a Business Expense Out of Your Own Pocket
The Company Pays For a Personal Expense
What Happens If I Run My Business Out of My House?
Hey, The Business Uses My Car Too!
What About Other Personal Assets Used For Business?
Setting Up The Management Bonus
Dividends

14. Remittances To The Government
What Are Government Remittances?
US Remittances To The Government
Canadian Remittances To The Government
Reconciling The Remittance Accounts

15. Maintaining a Petty Cash System
Setting Up The Petty Cash Fund
Using Your Petty Cash
Reconciling The Petty Cash Fund
Replenishing The Petty Cash Fund

16. Reconciling The Bank
The Bank Statement Arrives
The Reconciliation Process
What Happens If I Still Can't Reconcile?
Example of The Bank Reconciliation Process

17. When The Damn Thing Just Won't Balance
The Process of Reconciliation
Backwards Posting
Transposition Error
Addition Error

PART III: ADVANCED ISSUES

18. The Role of The External Accountant
Choosing An Accountant
The Role of The Accountant
What the Accountant Needs From You At Year End
The Process of Creating Financial Statements
Corporate Income Tax Returns
Posting The Adjusting Journal Entries
Rolling Forward The Year
How Do You Know When You're Outgrowing Your Accountant?

19. Budgeting: Planning For The Future
But How Do I Know What's Going To Happen In The Future?
Setting Up The 12-month Budget
Aren't I Just Making Up Fake Numbers?
Changes To The Company's Operation
Rolling, Rolling, Rolling, Keep That Budget Rolling

20. Monitoring Cash Flows: How Not to Run Out of Money
What Is Cash Flow?
What's The Difference Between Cash Flow and Net Income?
How Do I Know When My Business Is Going To Run Out Of Money?
Building Your Company's War Chest
How Can I Stretch My Company's Cash Further?
Barter: A Small Business Owner's Secret Weapon
The Future: How To Avoid The Cash Crunch Before It Hits

21. A Brief Look At Foreign Currency
Occasional Foreign Currency Transactions
The Foreign Currency Bank Account
Revaluation At Year End
Reconciling The Foreign Currency Bank Account
Foreign Currency Risk

22. Tax Planning
Minimizing Tax Versus Avoiding Tax
What Is Tax Integration?
Why You Need to Understand Tax Brackets
Deferring Tax Owing Versus Getting Rid of It Altogether
Owner/manager remuneration: Getting Money Out Of Your Business

23. Graduation
Boot Camp Test
Boot Camp Test Answers

Glossary
Resources For The Growing Business

It will happen eventually. As your business grows, you will at some point outgrow your current accounting system, whether you started out with a manual ledger, an Excel or Lotus spreadsheet, or simply a shoebox (or refrigerator box, depending on the number of receipts your business accumulates).

The need for a new accounting system may manifest itself in many different forms. You may find that payroll is becoming more onerous to calculate and track as you hire more employees. If you run a manufacturing or resale business, you may keep running out of stock on high-turnover items because you are out before you know it. If you run a service business, you may start losing track of how much time should be billed to each customer. Regardless of the various symptoms, the problem remains the same: your bookkeeping system is taking more of your time than it's worth.

Read more here...

"[Bookkeepers' Boot Camp] can save you a world of grief, plus provide the insight for success."
Book Views

"Angie Mohr provides extraordinarily useful information for anyone starting a business. If you're still struggling with the financial aspects of your new venture and your banker asks probing questions, this is the book for you."
Ellen Roseman
Business columnist
Author of Money 101
and Money 201

"From understanding a balance sheet to learning income and sales cycle basics, [Bookkeepers' Boot Camp] covers all needed to understand small business management. Invaluable, easily-used guide."
Midwest Book Review

Debt. It's the word many small business owners hate to hear. It's a reality for most businesses, however, to incur debt to finance operations, at least in the start up years. Although many small businesses are denied credit in the first few years, others have bankers and credit card companies begging for their business, especially those companies whose owners have substantial personal assets to attach.

I hear the following from small business owners every day:

"It doesn't matter. I get to write it off."

"You can't operate in this industry without a big line of credit."

"I need a corporate credit card to take my customers out to lunch."

"You have to spend money to make money."

All of these arguments are quite superficial and speak more to our penchant for overspending than anything else.

Read more here...

Every small business has lots of small expenses for which writing a check would be impractical: Running to the store for coffee cream, for example, or getting stamps at the post office. Enter petty cash.

Petty cash is simply money kept on hand rather than deposited in the bank account. It can be kept in the cash register, an envelope, or a box for all of the occasions where you have an expense of only a few dollars. Although the petty cash fund is usually only $100 or so, it is important to keep control of the fund and to be able to account for it and reconcile it, both to make sure that all expenses have been accounted for and also to make sure that cash doesn't go missing.

Read more here...