Bookkeeping Kit For Dummies
by Lita Epstein
Bookkeeping Kit For Dummies
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Copyright 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2011945571
ISBN 978-1-118-11645-6 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-22437-3 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-23770-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-24217-9 (ebk)
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Author
Lita Epstein, who earned her MBA from Emory Universitys Goizueta Business School, enjoys helping people develop good financial, investing, and tax planning skills.
While getting her MBA, Lita worked as a teaching assistant for the financial accounting department and ran the accounting lab. After completing her MBA, she managed finances for a small nonprofit organization and for the facilities management section of a large medical clinic.
She designs and teaches online courses on topics such as accounting, reading financial reports, and investing. Shes written more than 25 books, including Reading Financial Reports For Dummies and The Business Owners Guide to Reading and Understanding Financial Reports (Wiley).
Lita blogs periodically for AOLs Daily Finance and Real Estate. In the past, Lita has been a daily newspaper reporter, magazine editor, and fundraiser for the international activities of former President Jimmy Carter through The Carter Center.
Dedication
To my father, Jerome Kirschbrown, who taught me the importance of accounting, bookkeeping, and watching every detail.
Authors Acknowledgments
I want to take this opportunity to thank all the people who have helped make this book a reality. In particular, I want to thank the wonderful folks at Wiley who shepherded this project to completion, especially Stacy Kennedy and Tim Gallan. Finally, I want to thank my agent, Jessica Faust at BookEnds, who helps find all my book projects, and my husband, whos learned to stay out of the way when Im on a deadline.
Publishers Acknowledgments
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B ookkeepers manage all the financial data for small companies. If you subscribe to the idea that information is power (which I do), youll agree that the bookkeeper has a tremendous amount of power within a company. Information tracked in the books helps business owners make key decisions involving sales planning and product offerings and manage many other financial aspects of their business.
If it werent for the hard work of bookkeepers, companies wouldnt have any clue about what happens with their financial transactions. Without accurate financial bookkeeping, a company owner wouldnt know how many sales the company made, how much cash it collected, or how much cash it paid for the products sold to customers during the year. He also wouldnt know how much cash he paid to employees or spent on other business needs throughout the year.