Business Development Services (BDS) Forum

Basic Bookkeeping

• Introduction

• Basic Cash Book Template and monthly Overview

• Cash Boook with Accounts and electronic Cash Book

 
Introduction

Most of the accounting systems provided are too sophisticated for micro and small enterprises. If you introduce accounting to micro and small enterprises do it bottom-up and not top-down. That means, start first with very basic bookkeeping before further improvement. Basic bookkeeping for MSE which do not have any accounting means:

Cash Book

After introducing a simple cash book, the BDS provider should organize regular follow-up on enterprise level because we know that most of the trainees will not put their class-room training into practice.

Better would be to introduce basic bookkeeping without class room training but by on-the-spot advice. In Mali e.g. our BDS facilitator carried out visits to 40 enterprises per month for introducing bookkeeping. Those  business owners who are not serious to implement bookkeeping have been droped and replaced by others. This method is more efficient and shows measurable impact.

One step forward compared to a basic cash book would be to introduce a cash book with accounts. Two steps forward would be to introduce an electronic cash book on Excel basis. Medium and upper small enterprises should be introduced to professional accounting software of commercial training centres available on the market.

Lesson learnt:
Make accounting complicated and it will be without any impact!

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