

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>0:04</time>
      <p>
          Bookkeeping is an exact science. A penny is a penny, and you have to find it at the end of the month.
      </p>

        <cite>Mirav Ozeri - Host</cite>
      <time>0:11</time>
      <p>
          Hi, I&#39;m Ravozeri and welcome to How Much Can I Make. I am a curious journalist, fascinated by what people do for a living, what their jobs are really like, and how much they can earn. Join me as we dive into stories behind careers, uncovering insights and details, which I hope you&#39;ll find as intriguing as I do. So let&#39;s get started. Today&#39;s guest is Christina, a bookkeeper. And if you&#39;re into numbers and organized and want to eventually make some nice money, this could be the job for you. So let&#39;s dive right in and ask Christina, what does a bookkeeper really do?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>0:50</time>
      <p>
          Well, literally, when you think about it back in the day, a bookkeeper or somebody kept the books, which meant that was the way it started. It&#39;s now evolved into you pay the bills, you receive the money, you generate the invoices so that you can get the money, and then payroll is a big part of it.
      </p>

        <cite>Mirav Ozeri - Host</cite>
      <time>1:10</time>
      <p>
          When you say payroll, what do you have to do for payroll?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>1:13</time>
      <p>
          Well, it depends. The last bookkeeping job I did was for a restaurant. So at the end of the week, you have to figure out A how many hours they worked, B how many tips were brought in, and you have to break it down by credit card tips and cash tips, and you incorporate that into their salary, and then you have to deduct the taxes, insurances, or if they have any loans, or if they have a 401k or whatever it may be. You can do it through the portals now. And once you set it up, you just have to plug in numbers.
      </p>

        <cite>Mirav Ozeri - Host</cite>
      <time>1:46</time>
      <p>
          Okay, so you need to be good on a computer in general, but what software in particular do you need to know to be really good at it? An accounting software.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>1:54</time>
      <p>
          Intuit, QuickBooks. Excel is very important for doing spreadsheets. A lot of uh company owners want to see spreadsheets every month. They want to understand their profit and loss, PL we call that. They want to know how much they owe in taxes, they want to know how much they&#39;ve grown or not grown their business. So software is very important. In your opinion, what kind of person should get into bookkeeping? Somebody that&#39;s comfortable with numbers, somebody that&#39;s extremely organized, and somebody that has a sense of business. And because bookkeeping is an exact science, a penny is a penny and you have to find it at the end of the month. So you have to have that kind of aptitude for numbers, business, and know what the owner, if it&#39;s you or somebody else, is what they want out of their bookkeeping.
      </p>

        <cite>Mirav Ozeri - Host</cite>
      <time>2:50</time>
      <p>
          Well, like everything else, uh communication is the key.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>2:53</time>
      <p>
          How did you get your first job? Um, I was doing my own books and then when the economy turned, I put it out there that I could do people&#39;s books for them and one job after another came in because people were looking for somebody like me. And when you could do it all, not just pay the bills or receive the money or do collections or do payroll, pay out taxes, profit and loss, you know, all those things.
      </p>

        <cite>Mirav Ozeri - Host</cite>
      <time>3:20</time>
      <p>
          Okay, talking about profit and loss, let&#39;s talk money. How much can a beginner bookkeeper make and how much can they grow?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>3:28</time>
      <p>
          With no experience and just getting started, $20, $25 an hour. Or if you&#39;re going in full-time and you negotiate a salary. So a salary maybe $50,000. If you&#39;re um experienced, then obviously the rate goes up. I&#39;m a freelancer, so I set my rate because again, I&#39;m a 1099, I gotta pay my own taxes. Very few companies will uh put you on as a W-2. When people get hired as a bookkeeper, sometimes they even don&#39;t even call it a bookkeeper. They&#39;ll say office assistant or office manager, and that&#39;s their way of disguising that they really want you to do their books for them and they want to get away with not paying you enough. Are there any schools or courses for someone who is interested in becoming a bookkeeper? You can do classes online, and I would recommend that because if you have no business background at all, it&#39;ll be tough because you really don&#39;t know what you&#39;re looking for. So one of the techniques of a good bookkeeper is being able to negotiate with vendors.
      </p>

        <cite>Mirav Ozeri - Host</cite>
      <time>4:36</time>
      <p>
          The bookkeeper does it or the owner of the business does it?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>4:38</time>
      <p>
          Well, if you have a great bookkeeper, the owner will rely on the bookkeeper to do it. I was working for a restaurant recently, and it&#39;s really insane the kind of bookkeeping you have to do there. So the vendors, whether it&#39;s the liquor vendor or the food vendor, or the vegetable, or chairs, and you can negotiate how long you have to pay the bills, net 30 or something called net 10, 2%, which means if you pay in 10 days, you get 2% off. So, you know, there&#39;s a lot of creativity in bookkeeping. But if you don&#39;t have experience and you never really studied the whole thing, you really don&#39;t know. So, can somebody walk in with absolutely no experience? Sure. You can sit at a desk and somebody will tell you what to do.
      </p>

        <cite>Mirav Ozeri - Host</cite>
      <time>5:27</time>
      <p>
          Walk me through like a day in the bookkeeping life when, like, let&#39;s say we&#39;re for example with a restaurant.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>5:34</time>
      <p>
          So a typical day at the restaurant would be um accumulating the the tips and spreading that out, and that would be daily. Uh the bills that come in daily, things that uh need to be ordered that they run out of that the manager really didn&#39;t take care of. So you may have to do it and say to the vendor, can you throw in ten more of this or whatever? Sometimes you have to do advances, sometimes you have to do a check. The biggest thing is payroll, and that&#39;s insane. And if you don&#39;t keep up with payroll, it comes at you like a bomb the day it&#39;s due. So when you say payroll, what does it mean? You have to see how much each person Well, you have to get everybody&#39;s hours. Today they all clock in through their phones. They there&#39;s an app and they clock in when they came in and when they came out. If they&#39;re out sick, you have to make sure they&#39;re eligible to get paid. Um you have to distribute the tips of the day, cash and credit card. And the reason why you have to break out the difference is because on credit card tips you have to take two percent back to cover the credit card expenses. Uh liquor licenses, they are the most difficult thing to get in a restaurant. So you have to make sure that your liquor license is up to date, your liquor bills are paid on time.
      </p>

        <cite>Mirav Ozeri - Host</cite>
      <time>6:51</time>
      <p>
          So a lot of the things that you&#39;re describing to me do sound like a manager&#39;s job. What is the boundary between the bookkeepering and the manager?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>6:59</time>
      <p>
          In my case, I&#39;ve always been given more responsibility because I knew a lot and I had a lot of experience. So if you&#39;re a junior, a really junior bookkeeper, you may just do payables, or you may just do receivables, you may take a trip to the bank, or you may take a daily trip to the post office to pick up the mail and see if there&#39;s any checks. I mean, that&#39;s really basic bookkeeping. It&#39;s a job that if you&#39;re working for a huge corporation, then there would be a COO or a um controller who oversees the department and divvies up all the different people and their functions.
      </p>

        <cite>Mirav Ozeri - Host</cite>
      <time>7:39</time>
      <p>
          Was it an exciting job for you?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>7:41</time>
      <p>
          Initially, no, because it was a fallback job because I knew a lot about bookkeeping and numbers and what have you, and then I realized how interesting it was and that I do have an aptitude for numbers. If you don&#39;t enjoy it, but it&#39;s you feel satisfied because it it all works. It&#39;s like a jigsaw puzzle and you put it all together.
      </p>

        <cite>Mirav Ozeri - Host</cite>
      <time>8:01</time>
      <p>
          Which of the businesses you worked for you liked the most?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>8:04</time>
      <p>
          Landscape architecture. Why? Because it&#39;s gardening is my passion. So that one I enjoyed a lot because not o I wasn&#39;t just the bookkeeper, I was also the project manager. So I negotiated the pricing. I took all the bids and made decisions on who was gonna get the job based on their experience, their vision.
      </p>

        <cite>Mirav Ozeri - Host</cite>
      <time>8:26</time>
      <p>
          But um as a bookkeeper, what did you have to do? The same thing that you did for the restaurant?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>8:31</time>
      <p>
          No, I didn&#39;t do payroll and there&#39;s no tips involved. So you wrote out weekly checks for salary, but once you negotiated a job, then you had to put the whole project together in uh a quote for the client to review. And once the client approves it, then it becomes a billable and you negotiate how you&#39;re gonna build a client. Most projects get billed 50 up front, 25, and 25. So those are important things and you have to stay on top of it, especially if uh if you&#39;re running a hundred projects at the same time, you gotta stay on top of each one. So that&#39;s where Excel comes in very handy. You could set up these spreadsheets and say, Okay, fifty percent did I get it, so we can start the job, and then midway you get twenty-five percent, and at the end after you do the walkthrough, you get the balance.
      </p>

        <cite>Mirav Ozeri - Host</cite>
      <time>9:23</time>
      <p>
          What&#39;s the most important thing a bookkeeper should he or she should know when they start a job?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>9:29</time>
      <p>
          In my opinion, is understanding the industry you&#39;re in, because each industry has different requirements. And once you understand that, then you can see an overall picture. Are you a consulting company? Are you a law firm? Are you a landscaper? I think the most important thing are you a restaurant, uh, is understanding what industry you&#39;re in, because each industry has different requirements.
      </p>

        <cite>Mirav Ozeri - Host</cite>
      <time>9:58</time>
      <p>
          What would you say is the biggest challenge for a bookkeeper?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>10:01</time>
      <p>
          Probably the biggest thing is making sure that there&#39;s a flow of paperwork or information. So if somebody says, I&#39;m hiring you as my bookkeeper, well, what kind of business are you? Where am I getting my information from? Who&#39;s providing it to me? Is everything done electronically or does it come by paper or by email or by text? I mean, it&#39;s amazing how many people do business by text today.
      </p>

        <cite>Mirav Ozeri - Host</cite>
      <time>10:30</time>
      <p>
          Would you recommend for somebody who is looking for direction and career to get into bookkeeping? No, not at all.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>10:36</time>
      <p>
          Why not? Because it is very intricate, it can get very tedious, it is repetitive after all. And if you don&#39;t have the aptitude for numbers and you&#39;re extremely organized, then it&#39;s just not a profession.
      </p>

        <cite>Mirav Ozeri - Host</cite>
      <time>10:50</time>
      <p>
          Okay, even though you don&#39;t recommend it, I understand. Unless it&#39;s the right person, what would you say is the biggest reward of the job?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>10:59</time>
      <p>
          That at the end of the month, both columns say zero. That means they reconcile.
      </p>

        <cite>Mirav Ozeri - Host</cite>
      <time>11:08</time>
      <p>
          Okay, that&#39;s a wrap for today. If you have a comment or question, or would like us to cover a certain job, please let us know. Visit our website at how much can I make that info. We would love to hear from you. And on your way out, don&#39;t forget to subscribe and share this episode with anyone who is curious about their next job. See you next time.
      </p>