Simple & Practical Book Keeping

Keeping up-to-date accounting records can help to avoid business failure and high penalties from the Inland Revenue. This text explains how to keep books for both VAT and non-VAT registered businesses. A 30-day trial CD containing Sage Instant Accounts and Instant Payroll packages is included.

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Review:

This book demystified not just the layout of cash-based books but also the process behind making the entries and keeping records.  I would recommend a reader to make the effort to work through the examples, preferrably by creating his / her own electronic spreadsheets as one works through the examples.

I wish my accountant had given me this book when I started my small company and "forced" me to work through the examples. It would have saved a lot of effort and panic when tax return time came!

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A very good book that teaches more practical aspects of book keeping and VAT. Ideal for students with no practical experience. Sage demo is worth playing around with for your cv. Combination of AAT Drafting Fianancial Statement + this book will tell you all that you need.

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This book demystified not just the layout of cash-based books but also the process behind making the entries and keeping records.
I would recommend a reader to make the effort to work through the examples, preferrably by creating his / her own electronic spreadsheets as one works through the examples.

I wish my accountant had given me this book when I started my small company and "forced" me to work through the examples. It would have saved a lot of effort and panic when tax return time came!

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Having been in business for 18-months, the book-keeping has up to now been a fraught and confusing activity
This book leads you through the process of creating and checking simple books for a "cash" company with a few different product lines and without complex credit, invoice or discounting arrangements.

The exercises are well presented and explain the principles.

As your needs and company grow you can migrate to a custom-built package - but the principles established should ensure any new system is implemented effectively.

The section on filing records is most welcome.

The only area that I feel needs to be laboured a bit more is the mysterious concepts to a new-comer of

Cash to Bank
Bank Payments
and Bank Deposits

Contained in the description of company expenditure

I'm working my way through those particular items and keep on changing my mind about how to "account" for them.

I would recommend working through the exercises by building you own spreadsheets - this will show how the figures and calculations "hang-together"

This (or a similar book) should be required reading (and work) for any new small-business person. Perhaps ask your accountant to buy it for you as a gift (is that tax deductable? ).

I feel a good follow-up would be exercises on how to use the books you have laboured to create not just as an obligation to satisfy your accountant and the tax man, but how they can be used as a business tool to measure things like exposure to bad payment and cash-flow which is the life-blood of small businesses, who are the unpaid bankers of the economy.