In any type of business, there will always be a need for bookkeeping professionals. Accounting professionals will often work either as a freelancer or someone who works in a specific corporation. Most accountants have a specific discipline that they follow. They may either specialize in computing taxes or in other tasks such as accounting for receivables, calculating costs of materials, computing labor costs, checking payables and analyzing records.

Accountants who also work for large scale companies also have specific roles to play such as computing taxes, developing and maintaining budget, providing records to top managers as well as giving advice in terms of financial records. Such are the top bookkeeping responsibilities.

In terms of small businesses, there are also several forms of bookkeeping responsibilities which are given to accountants. One of which is the proper analyzing and filing of accounting records. Clerical accountants mostly use their time sorting records and checking for any anomalies with the company. Those who will be working in accounts receivable will receipts to invoices in order to record all the earnings of a company. Another common role within small businesses is that of the accounts payable clerk.

Accountants who are working on Accounts Payable are required to match vendor invoices to purchase orders. This function is critical as the result drives through to the income statement and balance sheet. Anomalies are often dealt with by the A/P clerk or given to higher functioning accountant to sort out. However, in small scale businesses both offices will often fall under only one accountant. This means that all computations will be done by a single accountant and not of many employees. The reason for this is that bookkeeping for small scale companies does not have the same volume of transactions as a larger company; the processes and accounting functions remain very similar.

Tax provisioning and the computation of taxable income may also be bookkeeping responsibilities. Accountants are required to provision the proper amount of tax liability so funds can be set aside to meet this obligation. Nearly every accounting transaction impacts the tax provision so the work is important and touches on the assets and liabilities of the company. The proper tax return is filed in accordance with tax legislation using the above work as the basis for the return and filing.

In terms of developing budget, the responsibility of the accountant is Often to coordinate budgeting efforts and ensure budgets are entered accurately into the accounting software.  Bookkeepers and accountants can be great sources of information during a budgeting exercise, but the primary inputs typically come from other employees who maybe operational experts in their own right.