Dorothy is retiring. We’re a little sad to see her go but we knew the day had to come. With Dorothy’s exit comes another change—old style bookkeeping is leaving the building.
You always knew when it was Dorothy’s day at the office. Some of you actually tried to hide, hoping to avoid the questions, “what do you mean, you lost the receipt for lunch in Tokyo?” (we know who you are)

Dorothy’s main responsibilities were data entry, reconciliations, and financial statement preparation. This meant she dealt with receipts, lots of them, as well as little bits of paper, napkins, and ticket stubs. Some came with scribbled notes, others with coffee stains, and hopefully, most were kept in a shoebox.

Dorothy would sort them into piles before entering numbers into a spreadsheet. She’d used the computer in the hall, you know, the only one with the up-to-date financial information. The process could take another couple of weeks. By the time the financial information was returned to the business owner, the data could be a month out of date.

Modern Dorothy takes the bookkeeping stage

Enter “Modern Dorothy”, today’s outsourced “real time” bookkeeper. Modern Dorothy is the first to tell you that the goal of bookkeeping has remained the same—keep accurate business transaction records. But the way in which bookkeeping is being done has been completely transformed by technology.

Modern Dorothy is an efficient data manager. She has the financial knowledge to understand what is happening with the various accounting software programs, and how to make them work best for your business.

Here’s what you can (and should) expect from Modern Dorothy.

Goodbye little bits of paper, hello cloud

  • Modern Dorothy is techy to the core—a true wiz with online accounting tools and applications. She uses cloud-based accounting programs, so there’s no need to figure out the latest software program or worry about updates.
  • Armed with the above expertise, Modern Dorothy provides you with real time bookkeeping services from anywhere in the world (using, of course, secure servers and policies). You still “meet”, but instead of finding her in a corner of the office, conversations take place through video chat, conferencing, text message, etc.
  • Accuracy and efficiency are her middle names. She’ll help you set up systems in order that transactions from your company’s bank and credit card financial accounts can now be automatically downloaded through a “bank feed”. Expense management tools eliminate or reduce managing all those paper receipts and even reconciliation is automated.
  • Because Modern Dorothy no longer has to do the manual work of data collection or spend hours tracking down inaccurate entries, she directs her skills to preparing weekly, even daily sales, expense and payment reports, or whatever kind of report you require to make business analysis easier, e.g. cash flow projections, ecommerce reports, etc.
  • Both of you now have access to all the information you need, 24 hours a day, so there’s no reason to print out files or lug them around in boxes. You can view your statements, invoices, or any data anywhere, anytime, from any device and know that the data is current.

Data manager and adviser: a seismic shift

In an age of the cloud, with paperless systems and a mobile office, real-time book keeping and cloud computing is here to stay. According to Alan Salmon, Board member of the Institute of Professional Bookkeepers of Canada, 75 percent of all bookkeepers will be providing services through the cloud in four years. It is, as he states, “a seismic shift”.
No wonder Dorothy had to retire.
In the end, both Dorothy’s would agree on this: it’s all about helping your client put the best systems in place to record and analyze their financial information, and do it as efficiently as possible.

http://www.cpaontario.ca/Resources/DandA/1009page2469.aspx