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Tools and Quizzes
>  What Kind of Record Keeper Are You?
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What Kind of Record Keeper Are You?

Are you the kind of business owner that keeps receipts in a shoebox? Or are you an accountant’s dream – someone who carefully logs in each and every receipt and keeps detailed registers tracking all expenses and income? Good record keeping can mean the difference between success and failure for a small business. Take this quiz to find out what kind of record keeper you are, so you can take steps to improve your practices and better manage your finances.

Answer each question below with the response that most closely matches your record keeping habits.

  1. You update your company’s books:
    Daily or several times a week
    Every couple of weeks
    Every month or two
    You know, I really should get to that

  2. It’s time to get ready for taxes. You show up for your appointment with your accountant with:
    A shoebox full of receipts and a self-conscious smile
    A list of expenses broken down by category and copies of your bank records showing receivables
    Nothing – your accountant already has up-to-date financials from your end-of-year meeting and now just wants to review your possible tax responsibilities
    I don’t use an accountant; I do my taxes myself

  3. When it comes time to reconcile your financial accounts, you typically:
    Pull out receipts, bank statements, register tapes and other paper records and record them in your ledger book
    Tote up your receivables and expenses and input them into your computer
    Reconcile accounts? What’s that?
    Download banking and payment data from my financial services provider directly into my accounting program

  4. What kind of financial reports do you, as the business owner, typically review?
    I never read financial reports; I leave that up to my finance people
    I see my end-of-year balance sheet after I’ve met with my accountant
    I look at quarterly profit and loss statements
    I see cash flow statements at least every month, as well as regular updates on receivables and expenses

  5. Your company has run out of file folders and needs a dozen ink cartridges for your printers. You send out an employee to pick up these items and pay for the expense with:
    Cash from your petty cash drawer
    Your personal credit card
    Your business credit card
    The employee can figure it out, as long as I get a receipt

  6. Your company is facing a short-term cash crunch. To see who owes you money and speed up receivables:
    You call up your accounting program and get a quick list of which accounts are overdue and by how many days
    You pull out your customer files to see which ones are overdue
    You look in your tickler file to see which invoices have yet to be collected
    You have no easy way of telling which or how many accounts are overdue

  7. The IRS has contacted you questioning some entertainment expenses you’ve deducted on a 3-year-old return. You:
    Ignore the letter
    Panic and start trying to re-assemble your expenses from an overflowing shoebox stuffed in your closet
    Look at your old receipt file, and see if you have enough details to support the expense claim
    Pull out your expense logs and calendars that detail the expenses in question, and talk with your accountant about how to proceed

  8. An electrical short starts an accidental fire in part of your office, destroying some files while others are soaked by water from the sprinkler system. What do you do?
    Our files are on our computer, so we think we could still access them
    Toss them out; they’re unreadable now anyway
    The files would be protected because we use fireproof cabinets
    We wouldn’t have to worry since we keep copies of all our important files and computer network back-up disks in a secure place off-site

  9. Which scenario describes how your company typically pays its regular monthly bills such as rent, phone and utilities:
    We go online and schedule our payments through our bank’s electronic payment system.
    We pay our bills on the same day each month
    We file bills away by due date, and pay them when they are due
    We have no payables policy, and sometimes pay bills late because we forget about them


 
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