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Bookkeeping

The day-to-day recording of a business's financial transactions — income, expenses, and the movement of money between accounts.

Bookkeeping is the systematic recording of every financial transaction a business makes: every sale, every purchase, every payment, every deposit. It is the foundation on which financial statements are built — without accurate bookkeeping, the income statement, cash flow statement, and balance sheet are unreliable.

For small businesses, bookkeeping typically involves recording transactions in accounting software (QuickBooks, Wave, Xero), reconciling bank and credit card statements, categorizing expenses, tracking accounts receivable and payable, and preparing records for tax filing.

See Small Business Bookkeeping.

Relations

Date created
Date updated
Instance of
Double entry bookkeeping
Part of
Business disciplines accounting terms
Produces
Journal
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Cite

@misc{emsenn2026-bookkeeping,
  author    = {emsenn},
  title     = {Bookkeeping},
  year      = {2026},
  note      = {The day-to-day recording of a business's financial transactions — income, expenses, and the movement of money between accounts.},
  url       = {https://emsenn.net/library/business/domains/accounting/terms/bookkeeping/},
  publisher = {emsenn.net},
  license   = {CC BY-SA 4.0}
}