Appendix B
Beginning Bookkeeper Checklist
A person who has been newly hired into the bookkeeper position may feel overwhelmed by the vast number of tasks to be completed and may wonder where to begin. The attached list gives some guidance about the priority of tasks.
The first few priorities are heavily stacked in favor of creating and improving the accuracy of a cash forecasting system, which requires a detailed knowledge of payables, receivables, debt payments, and capital expenditures. The new bookkeeper must have a firm grasp of this information before proceeding to any other steps, since a company without cash will not survive long enough for the bookkeeper to address anything else.
The next priority is to learn the payroll system, which probably recurs every few weeks, and so is of considerable importance—especially to keep your fellow employees happy. The next few steps are oriented toward locating any errors in the accounting records that might lead to incorrect financial statements, followed by learning how to create the financial statements and any measurements that are derived from those statements.
The next priority is to look for control issues that could cause you problems at a later date. Good sources of information about controls are the auditors’ management letter and any fines paid in the past for government reporting noncompliance.
Finally, we address a number of smaller areas for which you may assign different priorities, depending on the circumstances within ...
