The advice to accountants about bookkeeping is not correct.Advisors to accountants are telling them that the developments of AI mean they can take over the bookkeeping. Commentators continue to say that AI will replace bookkeepers and that our jobs are over.So what are they talking about? They are talking about the type of basic bookkeeping that accountants have been doing for hundreds of years, and that some accountants continue to do. They are taking about processing bank statements… which is about transactions that have already happened – it is simply about creating the records for tax. Mechanical, repetitive processes should be enhanced by the use of the best technology. Data entry is not the extent of ‘true bookkeeping’. In today's world, data entry is such a minimal part of the services a bookkeeper provides to a business owner.

What is ‘True Bookkeeping’?

What does the modern day bookkeeper do?It is about:
  • helping business.
  • improving business systems.
  • integrating the best technology that is appropriate for a business – to automate as much of what they do as possible.
  • managing the technology, and the business systems, to ensure they are performing as intended.
  • reporting, validating, and providing certainty to the business about what they are doing.
  • utilising all of the above to assist in meeting all of the compliance requirements.
A recent proposal – by other commentators to accountants – includes; “How to ensure your bookkeeping services are low-touch, high-profit.”It is simply wrong.
– True Bookkeeping is not “low-touch”.Bookkeeping is integrated business system management: It is working with the business – and the best technology based solutions that apply to the business – to improve their business efficiency, which leads to achieving the other purposes of bookkeeping; effective business process, technology based efficient solutions, efficient and streamlined record keeping, efficient and streamlined invoice generation, and purchase processing. True bookkeeping includes the personal relationship between the business systems expert (the bookkeeper) and the business.The message to accountants should be:
  1. The best integration of bookkeeping into their service offering is first to understand what bookkeeping is today and tomorrow.
  2. That bookkeeping is intensely working with the business, to allow the business to dedicate their time, and utilise their expertise performing the skills of the business, and concentrating on providing the goods and services of the business, while the bookkeeper empowers the business through efficiently providing business systems, recording, reporting and compliance.
  3. That effective bookkeeping services range from training and equipping the business to do the day-to-day themselves (and then the Bookkeeper manages and reports on the results of the business processes), through to being involved on a daily basis with some businesses.

Accountants Doing Bookkeeping

Irrespective of the relationship that may exist between the accounting service provision of the ‘firm’ and the bookkeeping service provision, our belief is that accountants and bookkeepers should be working together – recognising the strengths of their different skill sets, and having significant communication.It is working together from the different perspectives that allow the:
Business ↔ Systems/Bookkeeping ↔ Accounting segments 
to provide effective and compliant business outcomes, achievable in an efficient manner.Accountants wishing to take bookkeeping in-house need to be prepared to work hand-in-hand with the businesses in a manner that is far more intense than the traditional or normal accounting relationship.

Conclusion

The concept of ‘low touch’ bookkeeping is a poor provision of very limited data entry services. It would be limited to using technology to read bank transactions that have already happened, and process them into accounting software. This is not cutting edge service provision. It is definitely not true bookkeeping. It is not helping business.An example: BankFeeds which improve or replace antiquated record-keeping techniques, which might only be as much as 10% of what a bookkeeper should be doing.An example: Purchase Invoice (from suppliers) scanning software should be implemented, but the processing, authorising and paying requires a professional approach and verification services.Bookkeeping can be performed by accounting firms, but the provision of ‘true bookkeeping’ will require intense involvement with the business, and a set of integrated business management systems knowledge and skills.