 My name is Sue Schmidt, and I am your instructor for this course. As far as my background, I am a technically trained CPA, however the majority of my experience has been spent as a manufacturing controller for a company called Corning Incorporated, which is a Fortune 500 company. So I held various technical and manufacturing type roles all within accounting, but one job I had was the finance manager for training within our function. I did a lot of training for finance and accounting people, but also for non-financial professionals as well. I also taught college for almost five years, and I taught accounting one and accounting two. So that's my background, and let's begin to talk about the course. So you're probably wondering, what is the role of a bookkeeper? Well, it's an individual that is in fact trained in the field of accounting, and on a daily basis they create financial transactions, including recording in the general journal, posting information to all the accounts and journals. You often will use accounting software, so you'll have to become well-versed in accounting software, but sometimes it is a manual system. You'll maintain source documents such as invoices, cash receipts, vendor invoices, and you'll also perform many types of pay entries as well. A bookkeeper reconciles accounts to subsidiary ledgers, and we're going to talk about what a subsidiary ledger is a bit later in the course, and you want to ensure completeness of the information and that it is very accurate. A bookkeeper generates financial reports sometimes when required, but not always, and sometimes they can work for a large company and be in charge of a smaller segment of the bookkeeping requirements, but other times you can work independently and actually keep the books for several companies at a time. So there are many potential careers for a bookkeeper. An independent bookkeeper, as I mentioned, will have their own business and they can keep the books for many different businesses at one time. You could be an accounting firm assistant. There are very large and very small, and then regional accounting firms that require the assistance of a bookkeeper. You may work in a bank. You could work for an information services company. You could be a cost accounting clerk, a regular accounting clerk. You can do payroll, and you may even work in the audit field. So the typical job functions of a bookkeeper include using the accounting software, as we've talked about before. It could be SAP, it could be PeopleSoft, it may just be the simple software called QuickBooks, but you most likely will be using some type of software. I guarantee you'll be working on spreadsheets like Excel, so it will be important to be fairly proficient in Excel or some other form of spreadsheets, and you may even be able to draw information out of databases that you can use for analytical purposes. So you're going to post financial transactions into the software. You may be in charge of receiving and recording cash, checks, and preparing vouchers that support deposits. You may be required to put costs and revenue into the software, of course assigning each to the right account. You may be asked to produce reports in some cases. We're going to talk about a variety of reports such as the trial balance, which you will run several of, the balance sheet, the income statement, the statement of equity. There are many financial statements you could be asked to prepare. You will check accuracy in figures, posting, and reports. A key function within the accounting area is to ensure the data that we input in the system is correct, and so checking and rechecking for accuracy and ensuring that that information is correct is critical. You'll be asked to reconcile any differences that you may find in the records and research why they might have happened or make corrections. You will be required to maintain internal controls. Several years ago, there was a law passed called Sarbanes-Oxley, and it pretty much dictates everything we do in the accounting world to ensure that there are good internal controls, proper documentation supporting what we do, and that we have an audit trial for every single transaction that we record. You'll be in charge of helping to make sure that there are good, solid internal controls. And lastly, you'll be answering many, many questions from management. A lot of them are ad hoc. Some will be questions that you'll prepare answers for every single month when you close the books, but there will be many questions. So what are some of the required skills and traits of a bookkeeper? Well, analytical skills are very important. As I said, you need to ensure the accuracy of the information that's in the ledgers that's going to produce the financial reports. So when you find an error, you have to be able to figure out what's causing it and what the correction needs to be. You actually have to be able to notice when there is an error as well. So analytical skills is very important. I talked about using different accounting systems. So of course, computer skills are very important as well, including working with spreadsheets as well as accounting software. You need to be very detail oriented. You're responsible for putting in accurate financial information to create accurate reporting records. So it has to be completely free of all errors. Integrity. Sometimes the only thing that stands between an accurate ledger or an accurate financial information and something that might be slightly false is you. So you have to have great integrity to maintain excellent support for all the transactions, and sometimes you're forced to make some difficult decisions. You're also going to be exposed to information that may be confidential, such as payroll data, and you have to keep that very confidential. You never want to share information like that. Lastly, your math skills, right? You're doing a lot of adding, subtracting, recording financial information, checking numbers, so you need to be comfortable with basic arithmetic. So the one thing I can say about being a bookkeeper or an accountant is that there is always jobs for bookkeepers and accountants, guaranteed, okay, in many, many different markets as well. So you can see here what the median pay is, so the pay is fairly good. And if you're very good at what you do, obviously you can command a higher price. It does not require a full education beyond a high school diploma. And the training that you're obtaining right here, right now. You don't need work experience to start in the field, but I wouldn't recommend starting to create your own bookkeeping business right up front. I would work for a larger company or a smaller company and get your feet wet first before you try to venture out on your own because experience is important. You'll get great on-the-job training, and as you can see, there's a lot of growth in the field every single year, 10, 11% increase in the number of jobs that are out there. So there's always good bookkeeping jobs.