Please Don’t Make Them Do the Books!

These days the conventional wisdom is that you can take someone with average intelligence and buy them a QuickBooks license. Then, get them to watch a couple of YouTube videos and do the company’s books.

Certainly the folks at QuickBooks (or XERO) would like you to believe that anyone can do their own books – with the right software. The story goes that you just link the company’s bank and credit card accounts to your accounting software of choice and process the transactions through something like an artificial intelligence engine that you tweak yourself.

What could be simpler?

This aligns well with another myth that most college graduates learn from their introductory accounting instructors at university.

The mantra usually goes something like this:

“Owner-managers of small businesses need timely and accurate financial reporting, so they can use the information to manage their businesses.” This perspective wouldn’t be too far off if you accepted Statistics Canada’s definition of a small business as a company with fewer than 100 employees and focused on the top 2% of businesses with 50 or more employees.

Please Don’t Make Them Do the Books! –

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The demand for accounting software packages has gained momentum in recent years. The growth has been aided in regions such as the UK by the introduction of Government initiatives such as Making Tax Digital. In addition, the already evident shift in demand from desktop-based packages to cloud-based services has been propelled further forward as small businesses look to manage their finances and access support remotely. It has also inflated the addressable market for accounting software providers.

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ABOUT

Launch – June 16th, 2023

The MAIN STREET JOURNAL was launched online in 2023, as a kind of Canadian, small business counterpoint to the venerable WALL STREET JOURNAL (WSJ), established in New York City in 1889.

Canada’s small businesses are smaller than most people think.

This is true for people that work in small businesses, for policymakers, business schools, and the business press. The self-employed and other small business owners don’t ‘get no respect’ and yet about 73% of private sector employment in Canada is made up of the 2.85 million self-employed individuals, and 1.3 million small employer businesses which average less than 7 employees.

We believe it’s time that these workers, and the small business owner-managers that employ them, got some respect. What’s more, we believe that business schools and policymakers should get out of their ivory towers and take a walk on Main Street!