7 SKILLS YOU NEED to be a bookkeeper!

this video is about seven essential skills that you need to be a bookkeeper [Music] hey guys I'm Morgan from five points biz I'm a bookkeeper who helps you get organized I'm here with my magnet I'll castle today give me a thumbs up if you like magna tiles or if you're excited about this video and also don't forget to subscribe to my channel and hit the notification bell down below alright so as you know from the title we are talking about skills that bookkeepers need today so I did a video a while ago that was a myths about bookkeeper so popping myths and I popped balloons not you so it's trying to think of kind of like what's the opposite of popping a balloon or destroying a myth and I came up with building a castle so we're building the skills and obtaining the skills that you need to be a bookkeeper alright so one of the first things you need to build your business is some tech skills your bookkeeping business especially as a virtual bookkeeper I don't need to know how to do computer programming but you do need to have a definite comfort with like QuickBooks of computers with Google Docs or videoconferencing and more than anything you need to be able to be willing to learn new programs and to persevere when the technology isn't going your way so you might need to make you a new website and figure out how to do that if you like Excel and Excel documents then you're probably gonna be a good bookkeeper and of course this is the case with many jobs nowadays especially work from home virtual type jobs so definitely you need to have a good understanding of tech and a willingness to learn technology and as a bookkeeper you definitely need to be a learner you need to be continually learning new things often times you're gonna have to take classes you'll learn a new skill maybe you want to learn payroll so you need to take a payroll class maybe you have a new client who has a new industry that you've never learned before so you're gonna learn things from every single client and you need to be okay kind of not knowing those things but seeking out the answers and maybe finding a class about that or talking to other people in the field and just being comfortable with that continual aspect of learning and then you'll also kind of need to have a comfort with numbers you don't need to know like super long math equations or you know no math in great detail but you do have to be able to picture large numbers you know understand them up so I'd say like a million dollars or a couple million depending on your client so I just phrase it as that that comfort with numbers so I mean if your constant like mixing up numbers or switching them maybe this isn't the best career for you but if you can generally you know have a good understanding of them you're good to go third skill that you need as a bookkeeper is woo so you may not have heard of this word before I think it was an a personality test I took in college let me know in the comments if you know which one I'm talking about it might be strengths finder but I can't totally remember so Wu just means the ability to convince people of things and to have good communication skills basically so as a bookkeeper you definitely need to communication skills you're not just gonna be sitting in your desk you know never talking to anyone if you are a freelance bookkeeper who wants to get clients so first of all in marketing yourself you need to have some boo you need to have some good communication and some pupil skills so I have a couple videos about that I have a video about what to ask clients and impostor syndrome and if you're nervous to talk to clients I have a video about that so check those out after you're done watching this if you are nervous or if you need to practice this skill the main thing I can say is just practice practice practice do it a bunch of times ahead of time think of all the different scenarios that are possible and then that practice what you would say in each situation and then apart from marketing when you're first meeting clients it's also important as you go along and as you work with your clients to have really good communication and people skills so your clients are going to want to know what your what deadlines you're meeting maybe something went wrong in one of your reports is delayed or maybe QuickBooks had some issues that you need to work through make sure you're telling your client those things so that they know why you're delayed and they don't think that you're just slacking off and this goes with written communication as well so make sure you are writing emails and instant messages or whatever texts you may do in a professional manner many times bookkeepers are introverts I know I consider myself an introvert but I am able to communicate and to be friendly and personable when I need to be next essential skill as a bookkeeper is to be detail-oriented so you're working with people's finances and you may be working with hundreds and hundreds or thousands maybe of transactions every month and your clients are counting on you to be responsible for those transactions and to make sure that they are going in the right places where to pay the bills and make sure you're paying the right amount to the right vendor so even if you do consider your more of like a big-picture thinker that's okay but you do need to be willing to slow down double-check each detail so that was actually kind of how the name of man business came about as fine points so I organized the details of your business because in bookkeeping it's definitely possible to have things go wrong or to have little mistakes here and there and you want to make sure you're catching those things so maybe some expense gotten around category you need to be able to look through the details of that and make sure that you're it's correct or maybe the bank reconciliation isn't isn't equaling out at the end of the month so you need to go through each transaction and figure out where the error is all right so order I wanted like a short concise word to encompass a lot of things but basically this means being super organized being reliable and dependable all rolled up in this work as a bookkeeper and you are gonna be working with a lot of different things that you need to keep organized so you'll have multiple clients in different stages of their businesses with different types of businesses and you'll also have different documents coming in from different people different clients may need different reporting or different invoicing and so you need to keep organized what each person needs and part of that order is also prioritizing the most important thing so you need to be able to identify what is on fire what needs to be done today for this client and then what you can put off so I definitely recommend utilizing your calendar for this so put all of the monthly deadlines that you have on your calendar and you can check them off use different workflow tools there's a million different online workflow tools right now I'm using asana personally and I'm really liking it you can make different boards for different clients or different subjects set reminders and all that type of thing so again remember your client hired you to help them organize their business and to help them be another set of eyes so that they didn't have to remember to do all these tasks they want you to create order in their business and the more reliable you are and the more they can depend on you the better all right number six on my list is vision so this almost seems kind of in contradiction to the detail-oriented one that I already said but you do need to be visionary both for yourself and for your clients so first of all for your clients it's great if you can help them look at the big picture work on budget think about their finances long term like what are their long term goals and how can their finances and their budget meet those goals you can pull certain reports that will help them with that quick books has so many options you can do things by month by year you can compare it to last year you can see what open invoices there are you can categorize different streams of income and accounts or with classes so there are so many different options and you as a knowledgeable bookkeeper can advise your client on how they can set up their books or what would best serve them and then of course in your own bookkeeping business you also want to have that vision so what are your goals do you want to travel do you want to work from home do you want to work two days a week is there a certain niche that you're interested that you really want to get into or do you want to prioritize family time and how can you be creative with your marketing if you want to grow your business so for all those things your own business you do have to have kind of a visionary outlook the next one I have kind of a love-hate relationship with and that is grit so this is kind of a trendy word right now it means to have determination and when things go wrong you keep going and I think grit is one of the harder things for me to really dig in and come to terms with because sometimes when I encounter different problems I just want to give up or I just get frustrated and your first year of business especially and even beyond that you're gonna have so many things that you don't know how to do so you're gonna need to make a website you're gonna figure out how how to get insurance even like setting up your LLC or giving your business license all of these things you maybe you want to do Facebook Ads maybe you want to you know learn a new technology all these things are potential roadblocks that you need to have a grit to get past being a bookkeeper or starting your business really does have so many benefits like you have such a good potential for income but it's not something that happens overnight it really requires a lot of hard work and determination and I think this is the gift for tons of different entrepreneurs including bookkeeping so one of my goals to my channel is to encourage you guys and keep you going and really build up that grit in you all right so now you can see we have our beautiful castle going and tada we have a beautiful bookkeeping business you can see the foundation are our seven essential skills for bookkeepers and then we've built a beautiful business so give me a thumbs up if you like to see metaphors and if you want to see more leave me a comment down below if you have any other metaphor ideas or also if you have any ideas about workflow tools that you really like I have been looking for different options for those thanks for watching I'll see you guys next week

Channel: FinePoints

Views: 68,345

Keywords: 7 SKILLS YOU NEED to be a bookkeeper, skills to be a bookkeeper, bookkeeper skills, be a bookkeeper, start a bookkeeping business, how to start bookkeeping, essential skills for bookkeepers, how to be a bookkeeper, finepoints, finepoints bookkeeping, bookkeeper, bookkeeping, bookkeeper launch, 5 minute bookkeeping, bookkeeping life, hector garcia, start bookkeeping with no experience, why start bookkeeping, start bookkeeping

Id: cX9A-y1GcRI

Length: 8min 38sec (518 seconds)

Published: Tue May 26 2020