For those who have the skills and desire, creating a bookkeeping service business can be both lucrative and personally satisfying, allowing you to work from home and manage your schedule around your family obligations.

Bookkeeping provides the financial information that is the life-blood of business. You can't get where you want to go if you don't have a map and a plan to get there. Bookkeeping gives you the information to guide you to success.

Why do businesses need bookkeeping? To know if they're making a profit. To make day-to-day decisions that affect the business. To get loans and investment capital. To pay what they owe in taxes, no more, no less.

How does a small business get started doing its bookkeeping correctly?

This is a question that every business owner should ask as soon as possible in the process of starting the business. Rarely does this happen however. Usually, the business owner is scrambling to do the bookkeeping as a tax filing deadline looms and failure to file penalties threaten.

A good starting point after getting your IRS identification number is to open a business checking account. A separate checking account for your business transactions will make record keeping easier by isolating your business activities from your personal activities. Along with your business account, get a debit card and a credit card that are tied to your business checking account. Then make sure that every business expense is paid by writing a check from your business account or using the business debit or credit card. Always be sure to keep the receipts that you get when you pay for anything. Write notations on the receipt to help you remember what it was for.

As for your business income; be sure to deposit all payments that you receive into your business checking account and make notations regarding what the payment was for and who was paying you. A software program such as QuickBooks makes this whole process a lot simpler by allowing you to write and print checks, create invoices and apply customer payments against the invoices, make deposits, create estimates for customers, and much more.

You should learn how to use your accounting software but it’s also a good idea to hire an independent bookkeeper to get your system set up correctly and keep it running smoothly and correctly from month-to-month. Even if you have an in-house bookkeeper, having an independent professional will ensure that all procedures are being followed correctly and consistently and that no fraud is being perpetrated.