Your Books Don't Have to Be Pretty, They Have to Be Accurate

I like things organized.

Like, really organized.

Give me a mess, a system that makes absolutely no sense, or a problem nobody can quite figure out, and I am probably going to want to fix it, or at least narrow it down to plausible possibilities.

Which makes bookkeeping a pretty reasonable career choice.

But here's the the weird thing:

Your books don't actually have to be pretty.

Businesses are messy.

Someone uses the wrong card.

A receipt disappears into the abyss.

A vendor gets paid twice.

Jeff doesn't believe taxes are fair, so he failed (accidentally of course) to set up sales tax.

You buy something for the business with your personal card because that's the card you had in your hand.

QuickBooks decides to do something completely inexplicable because apparently it has free will.

It happens.

Good bookkeeping isn't about having perfectly pristine books where nothing weird ever happens.

It's about being able to explain the weird.

If I look at your financials and something doesn't make sense, I should be able to follow the trail and figure out why.

Your bank accounts should reconcile.

Your income should actually be your income.

Your expenses should reasonable reflect what you spend money on.

And when you look at your reports, you should be able to trust what they're telling you.

Because there's a big difference between messy and inaccurate.

Messy can be sorted out.

Inaccurate numbers or categorization can make you think you're making money when you aren't—or convince you that you're in trouble when you're actually doing just fine.

So no, your books don't have to be pretty.

They just have to tell the truth.