The Zen of Bookkeeping in Troubled Times

By Debbie Coe

There is no doubt that financially things have been tough for a while now, but one of the more positive aspects of this situation is that you may have more time available to get a handle on your financial matters. During the boom times everything was moving at such an incredibly fast pace that lots of people could not keep track of their finances. They knew that they had enough money, but they really did not have a good picture of what was really going on with their money. Bank statements, credit card statements, refinances, etc. would pile up, and then if the data was organized there still was no time to really go over the details.

So, now, for good or for worse, there is the time. And I would like to give a few practical suggestions on how to take a deep breath and feel more in control of your life around your finances.

The hardest part of bookkeeping is to organize and then to keep up with the information. Since almost everyone now uses a computer things are made somewhat easier in getting your data into a form where you can look at your financial history. And the easiest way to get ready to input and work with your information in order to review your financial history is as follows:

• Go through all your bank, credit card statements, and loan statements and put them in date order.
• Organize all your receipts in piles as to whether they are from your debit card, credit card, receipts paid by check, and receipts paid by cash. After you have sorted all the receipts into their respective piles, put them into date order. This work will come in very handy when you cannot figure out what an item is on either your bank or credit card statement. And, for tax purposes, you will have all your information organized if there are ever any questions on that front.
• Next, enter your information. Enter statement by statement, and reconcile each statement after you have entered the information to make sure you have not double entered or left out any of your transactions, and also to make sure the numbers entered are accurate.
• Finally, run your financial reports. You can run a Cash Flow report or Profit and Loss report to see what is really coming in and what is going out. If you are able to do this on a monthly basis, all the better, since you will have an even more accurate and timely picture of what is going on for you with your money.

These few suggestions will definitely help you gain more control over your financial life. The tough part is getting started, and the best way to keep from going into overwhelm is to not wait until the last minute, and work on things for an hour every day. At first things will seem daunting, but if you keep at it you will definitely see you are making progress and getting through all the information. And the payoff will be that when things turn around you will be in a much better position to know what is going on in your financial life.

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