My daughter is thinking of opening her own business, and she’s asked me to get her a couple of books. The book descriptions in the catalogs and databases aren’t adequate, so I’m looking for recommendations. She’s very intelligent and strongly motivated. The books need to cover the basics without talking down to her, and if they’re textbooks, they need to be useful without a teacher.
The first book needs to be a basic primer on GAAP and business accounting. She knows how to balance a checkbook, and knows the difference between credits and debits, but she’s never dealt with balance sheets, profit/loss statements, and taxes.
The second book needs to cover business economics. Yeah, I know. This is a four-year college degree, but I want to find something that will get her up and going on all of the concepts. It would be a nice side benefit if it piqued her interest enough to get her signed up for classes at the local college
Sorry, no book references for you but I do have a suggestion. Instead of reading about the bookkeeping, see if you know anyone familiar with Quickbooks or Microsoft Money or a similar bookkeeping programs. Have them set her up in the program and give her some instructions. Once the accounts are set-up, the programs themselves tend to be very user friendly (at least I thought Quickbooks was).
Depending on the type of business, you can pretty much forget about GAAP. She will want to set up her reporting to cater to filing with local and federal taxing authorities. It sounds like she is setting up a sole proprietorship, so she will want to become familiar with Federal Tax Schedule C (or schedule C-EZ).
What kind of business is she wanting to start? Service? Retail?
She should take a coupla accounting classes ACCT291/202[beginning accounting] and BLAW200[intro to buinesslaw]. These will tell you everything you need to know about keeping the books yourself. It will also help you read financial documents and understand the goobledegoop. Reading books are fine but people tend to skip the boring parts which in this case, unless you’re a nerd like, it pretty much the whole book!! {I luved doing depreciation}
My wife has kept the books for several of my businesses and for her church. She’ll be setting up the software and showing my daughter how to use it, both for home and for the business.
She’s considering starting a retail business.
Everybody learns differently. She does much better reading the material, where she can go back over it, than listening to lectures. We ended up homeschooling her through high school because she wasn’t getting anything out of the classrooms, and was falling behind. Once we started homeschooling, she ripped into the books, and finished school a year early. Books are definitely the way to go for her, and she isn’t the type to skip the boring parts. Her favorite homeschool class was economics.
Have you taken a look at “The Small Business Kit for Dummies”? I am sorry to say I have not looked at this book but I have read different “For Dummies” books. The language did not talk down and it pretty easily comprehended. Amazon has new editions listed at $20.39 with used copies as low as $4.09.
Generally speaking, I avoid the Dummies series because I find the whole concept offensive. I’m not a dummy, so why read a book targeted at them? Why would anyone want to buy a book that insulted them right on the front cover?
I do appreciate the advice, however, and I’ll go down to the bookstore and take a look at this one.
I’ve done Bookkeeping for several small businesses. I have a degree in Accounting but I’m not a CPA. I learned more from using Quickbooks Pro than I did in all my Accounting classes. I highly recommend Quickbooks. You don’t even need to take a class before using it. If you can write a check, you can do your own books. All of the financial statements are done for you…all you have to do is print them out. It has a great user manual if you need it.
