In my experience many business owners think of accountants as glorified bookkeepers that also file annual taxes, and a good accountant also helps with saving you on taxesWhile this isn’t wrong, it’s not the complete picture. Below I’ve taken some excepts from a Forbes article, which I reference at the bottom for further reading.

Bookkeeper Duties

Bookkeepers are extremely involved in daily company operations. They need to be involved in every process where payments occur. Bookkeepers need a strong grasp of all financial details in the company so they know if there are any inconsistencies.

Accountant Duties

An accountant needs strong and accurate bookkeeping to do their work. However, their work is different. They look at all of the financial details of a company so they can make larger decisions about how the business operates. Accountants advise leadership on how to make more strategic financial changes that save the company money or generate more profit.

Bottom Line

Bookkeepers and accountants are both critical for the financial health of a company. If you’re not tracking daily expenses, you’ll have very little information to give to your accountant and they won’t be able to make informed decisions. If you’re only focusing on expenses and not big-picture financial data, you’ll miss out on some strategic opportunities.

At Proactive Accounting we have a wide variety of services we make available to our clients. You can choose which of these you want to enroll in and can always change these services in the future (more or fewer).

[ref: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/bookkeeping-vs-accounting/]