After many years at a company I took the leap for a new job with a more attractive package.
I studied IAB manual bookkeeping and up to AAT level 3.
The girl who worked in the position before me left three weeks before I started so have entered the office to a pile of paperwork and have no one to tell me how things are done, other than a few notes she wrote in a book.
On interview I was very honest saying I had not done CIS and other things before and they didn't seem to mind, but after two days I have been left to work things out for myself.
I have separated mail into invoices, statements and time sheets, but no one has any idea how she previously allocated labour and materials to jobs and purchase order numbers aren't used.
Has anyone got any helpful tips, reassurance or advice, could really use some! Feeling useless... :(
First off, don't start feeling that you should know all of this but don't as it sounds very much as though the one's who should know don't know and they are trying to divest themselves of their responsibility for the work.
I'm not sure of your exact scenario over the allocations. Can you glean anything at all from her previous work? What sort of volumes are we talking about?
In these scenarios the first thing that I do is drop all of the informatyion that I have to Excel and then try to see what I can match up to eradicate it.
You mention that there are no purchase order numbers but some of the amounts will be unique and that in itself can eradicate a few entries. You may also find entries where down to dates alone the allocation could only be to a certain job.
Its doubtful that you will be able to track them all that way but you may be surprised at how you chip away at the volume of issues to get to a more managable level for which you will need management input in order to determin the correct allocations.
The key is though that you would nt simply be going to them saying that you have no idea about any of the entries but rather armed with the fact that you have whittled the issues down (make sure that they know that) and where possible you have categorised those that remain.
Whilst it's never advisable to try and avoid responsibility by throwing one's predecessor under the bus (you have no idea who liked her), ensure that you emphasise what you have done, what you have needed to correct and how few remain compared to your starting position as that should make management more amenable to helping with the final allocations.
As I say, the issue is not yours but you will score brownie points for whittling the issues down as much as you can before taking it to management. When you do though theyy have to know that you have really gone as far as you can without assistance.
good luck kate,
all the best,
Shaun.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Can you please add your name so that it appears below the line on your posts, saves people looking it up. ( via edit profile).
Well done on the new job, best way to learn is in at the deep end, although it's also the hardest and no good if you make a mistake.
So, a question or four....are you the company bookkeeper? What do they do? Are you on the contractors side of the fence or subcontractors (or both)? What software are you using for bookkeeping/invoicing/CIS (latter may be through payroll)?
Faster than a speeding bullet me Joanne... For some reason that one never impresses the ladies, lol.
Like yourself I was trying to avoid posting tonight but it sounds as though Kates pulling her hair out over this where the likes of ourselves get these complete bags of wombat excrement all of the time so we can at least offer some reassurance that she's not useless and all that she can do is get rid of the low hanging fruit to cut the number of issues down and then go back to them with the remainder ensuring that she emphasises how few it is compared to what she started with.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Faster than a speeding bullet me Joanne... For some reason that one never impresses the ladies, lol. I can't think why
Like yourself I was trying to avoid posting tonight but it sounds as though Kates pulling her hair out over this where the likes of ourselves get these complete bags of wombat excrement love that expression, but sushhhh you will have Kate running for the hills again
all of the time so we can at least offer some reassurance that she's not useless and all that she can do is get rid of the low hanging fruit to cut the number of issues down and then go back to them with the remainder ensuring that she emphasises how few it is compared to what she started with.
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Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
Thank you so much for your super fast & reassuring replies!
It's a construction firm and my job was advertised as admin assistant but I'm not assisting anyone, I pass payroll to the accountant but have to prepare all the hours & CIS from the sub contractors to them.
Everything just seems a little murky & I suppose from the comfort of knowing my old position so well, being super organised, this is throwing me off a little.
There are heaps of spreadsheets which I'm not used to using so that's throwing me out too.
The owners seem happy with me & have said it'll take a while for me to get my head around it.
Back to it today, got to sort hours to send to accountant then I'll be trying to match invoices to purchase orders.
Wish me luck!
There are a couple of quick books experts on here. I have it but dont use it, didnt take to it much, am a Sage fan. But just so we know - is it QB cloudy version or a desktop?
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Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
Yes it's the quick books online version, which is new to me too. If there are QB wizards I would love to speak to you!
Today I got off all the hours to the accountant who generates the payslips which then get sent back for us to pay.
I managed to get some allocation to invoices & sort which were sundry items & others that needing costing towards a job.
I got the low down on their invoicing procedure of part payments & retention.
I'm hoping tomorrow to generate some new spreadsheets for future jobs so I can keep a closer eye on our costing & making a simpler more straight forward spreadsheet for inputting labour hours into.
Any systems you already use would be great to hear! Hope I'm not going on but discovering this forum is really comforting & really helped me have a more optimistic attitude :)
Thanks guys!
I use QB's desktop and online quite a lot so fire away with the questions. I'm not on here too much at the mo, but will make an effort to get on here more often seen as you are a new QB's user.
It is really easy to use, took me a while to find some of the reports, I've been using it for about 2 years now.
Hi!
So quick books online.
Matching transactions just seems too easy, they have all their bank accounts connected too so all updated regularly.
The girl before me used to upload a PDF invoice to every invoice inputed, I have never heard of this - have you?
I think I'm just struggling to follow what procedures are already in place because no one is there to show me & im probably being quite hard on myself.
X
uploading invoices / receipts as originally sent or received keeps everything in one place. Still file away the originals but in case of a query you have access to a copy of the document straight away. She sounds as though she was very well organised and was thinking about what evidence she needed to hand in the event of an investigation.
It also means that after seven years when the physical evidence does not need to be retained she still had a stored copy in case an investigation was instigated within the allowable twenty years (personally I would always keep the original documentation as well).
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Hi!
So quick books online.
Matching transactions just seems too easy, they have all their bank accounts connected too so all updated regularly.
The girl before me used to upload a PDF invoice to every invoice inputed, I have never heard of this - have you?
I think I'm just struggling to follow what procedures are already in place because no one is there to show me & im probably being quite hard on myself.
X
Hi Kate
You seem to have reposted your post from yesterday, after Shaun had responded. So to change this for any comments today, just go to edit, get rid of the double post and type in what you need.
Also, can you add your name to the signature bar pls.
Glad it's going better.
Watch out for the bank feeds, they need checking to make sure they go where you want them to/look out for new transactions that need tweaking.
__________________
Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
