This article is to showcase the day in a life of a Bookkeeper in the Outsourced Accounting & Payroll Department.

Firstly, a bookkeeper has strict deadlines and responsibilities to adhere to. A normal day would start by referring to a checklist to see what needs to be attended to. In most instances a bookkeeper would know this by heart.

Looking at the accounting services that we offer, we process our clients’ books referring to the source documents supplied by our clients, like customer invoices/credit notes, suppliers invoices/debit notes, bank statements, petty cash and the like by using Pastel software. Most of our clients are VAT registered with SARS and are required to submit their VAT Returns on a monthly or bi-monthly basis. A bookkeeper would process the accounts, calculate the VAT payable or refundable then communicate with the client on how much is payable to SARS so they could plan their cash flow in time, or advise the clients of how much is expected to be refunded.

Mostly where a refund is expected, SARS would select to perform an audit on that VAT period. Again, a bookkeeper would put together supporting documents used to calculate the VAT and send the documents to SARS using online an facility, e-filing. With some clients we have agreements to load or make payments to the suppliers and to the employees on their behalf. These payments have due dates, so as a bookkeeper you have to keep a record of when and what is payable in order to avoid penalty fees and/or interest charged or even lawsuits from the employees for late payments.

In terms of our Payroll service, we calculate the client salaries using VIP software and put together an easy to read Excel spreadsheet that shows earnings, deductions, net pay and total cost for each employee and send it to the client for approval. This is necessary in order to get confirmation if the client is satisfied with the outcome or would like to make some changes before we finalise the payroll. If there are changes to be made, the payroll must be amended and the spreadsheet sent back again to the client for approval. Once the client is satisfied, and has approved the payroll, we finalise the payroll by filing the EMP201 Return, submit UIF Declarations and send payslips to clients’ offices, or even to the employees directly in some instances.

Employees are expecting their salaries to be paid on the agreed date with their employer, and SARS wants payroll taxes be paid on or before the 7th of every month, so strict adherence to deadlines is critical.

Sometimes an employer may need to make a lump sum payment to an employee and this cannot be included as a normal earning. Here a tax directive certificate needs to be obtained from SARS in order to determine how much tax needs to be deducted from the lump sum payment. A bookkeeper would attend to this task by filing an application to get the Tax Directive Certificate on such instances.

In addition to this, there are other tasks on Payroll service such as bi-annual & annual reconciliations of the EMP501 submissions to SARS, issuing of IRP5 certificates to employees at the end of tax year and submission and reconciliation of Return of Earnings to the Department of Labour that need to be attended to by the bookkeeper.

To make it easier for our clients to keep track of what is happening in their business, we also put together management reports on a monthly basis that include a trial balance, income statement, balance sheet and a general ledger. We also assist with the queries that might arise from this report from the client. Some of our clients have their own template for their management report and we would need to prepare the report using this template as it is easier for our clients to run and manage their businesses.

Where an audit needs to be conducted on our clients’ books, a bookkeeper would need to prepare for the audit and assist the auditors with information and attend to their queries.

In conclusion, I would say that a good bookkeeper is vital to any business no matter how big or small. A clean record of business financials would bring sustainability and growth to the business and management should be able to make rational business decisions based on the information supplied by bookkeeper.

Sello Mokgotho

Junior Bookkeeper, Johannesburg