We have just celebrated National Secretary's Week. That's great, but what about the forgotten person who often has much to do with the success of many entrepreneurs and small business people? And whom might I be speaking of as the most often overlooked and least appreciated of all employees? The bookkeeper, of course. When does she or he get their special week?

This Rodney Dangerfield of most small businesses, who gets little respect and almost never any thanks, just keeps plodding along, saving the employer from a basketfull of headaches like bounced checks, IRS audits and bank charges. Occasionally a benevolent employer will throw the bookkeeper a bag of Fritos or chips, but she or he deserves a lot more.I credit my bookkeeper of some 22 years with keeping me honest and perhaps even keeping me out of jail. Ruth Hughes got plenty of respect around our house, and everyone knew it. If fact, my son Scott often tells people that when he was growing up, he only knew of two women I was afraid of, my wife and the bookkeeper. I strongly disagree with him - I have never been afraid of my wife.

An honest, hard-working bookkeeper is worth her or his weight in silver dollars.

When I was building Barclays Oxygen Homecare, an Inc. Magazine 500 company, I felt that our part-time bookkeeper, with periodical oversight from our CPA, was every bit as effective for my needs as the full-time CPA controllers that many of my much smaller competitors had on staff. Even when we were collecting in excess of $400,000 per month, our bookkeeper was able to handle most of our accounting needs. Here's how she was able to do it:

1. We had a payroll service issue all checks, W-2's and quarterly reports as well as make all FICA deposits for us. This saved Ruth dozens of hours she would have taken each pay period to do this work for our 50 employees. Instead she was doing other vital tasks.

2. Although she was comfortable with the double entry system and handwritten journals, she learned the latest computer-based bookkeeping systems and used them fully to save her time and give me detailed reports as often as I requested them.

3. We made sure that she received copies of almost everything that had any figures on it. That meant all expense reports, purchase orders, loan and lease documents, compensation and bonus com-putations. This saved us dozens of hours each month searching for needed answers.

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4. Ruth did and kept everything by the book - hence the title bookkeeper. She fudged on nothing. She felt her responsibility was to record everything according to IRS guidelines. If our CPA wanted to be more liberal when he reviewed the books quarterly, that was fine with her, but she called things the way she saw them. It was black or white. Gray was never a choice.

5. Ruth had the responsibility of writing checks to pay the bills, but only after I had initialed and approved each. No initials, no check was written. Ruth quickly generated computer checks and then delivered them to me with the ini-tialed bills for my signing. After nearly 20 years, I finally asked her to start signing the checks, a responsibility that she never sought, nor one that I delegated lightly.

I wish all bookkeepers were as honest and straightforward as Ruth Hughes, but many are not. Businesses fail each year because of dishonest bookkeepers, but when that happens I don't blame the bookkeeper entirely. I blame the owner who fails to keep a checks-and-balances system in place to prevent dishonesty.

So here's to Ruth Hughes. I declare next week as National Bookkeeper Week. And even though I have moved from Colorado and can't take Ruth to lunch, I suggest you buy your bookkeeper flowers or a gift next week. And be sure and get a receipt. It is clearly a legitimate business expense. Even Ruth would have allowed that.

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