So in recent times I’ve had a lot of people come to me and ask me how I got into bookkeeping because they want to get into bookkeeping or the admin field, so I thought I’d share my story. When I was in high school at Bunbury Catholic College I was doing accounting in year 11 and 12 and in that time I also was working/volunteering/helping out my parents with their small business. Dad was a tradesman, mum a bookkeeper, and so I was helping my parents out with some of the basics of the bookkeeping of the business.
When I finished high school my plan was to go on to university and do a Bachelor of Business. At the end of first year we were asked to nominate a couple of majors to go on to and I decided to do Accounting and I was going to do Sports Management. In the end I changed to Public Practice, a combination of finance, tax and law subjects. So I eventually graduated in 2002 with the double degree. After a while I found that getting a job in the field was rather difficult and I was going to throw it all in and go into a different professional field. In 2005 I finally landed a job working in bookkeeping working for a local pub, a job that had its benefits - free drinks, cheap food! So I worked there for a while until I landed a job working in public practice which from the outset of my starting my degree was always where I wanted to be. I Soon realised it wasn’t. The job was okay but I was working in a very difficult work environment. After a couple of years of that I finally decided to get out and I changed to working for a commercial property management firm. Working there was a lot of fun I certainly learnt a lot and it was a different field to what I had been doing previously.
Unexpectedly in 2010 I found myself without a job. After a few weeks off I landed a temp job and then I was asked by a couple of people if I could have a look at doing their bookkeeping. One was a friend of mine, a local lawyer, another one was the local surf club. The lawyer’s books I did for a while and the surf club one lasted for about twelve months and at that point in time I realised that financially it wasn’t beneficial and so decided to go back into the employee work force. I started working for a local surveying company. This was a largely bookkeeping role with a little accounting in it and it was a lot of fun. Come 2012 at the beginning of the year I find myself made redundant and so again after a few weeks off I started working for a business on a contract basis. This was a ‘rescue job’ and a very difficult one. It was about this time that I realised that potentially I could make a business out of this and so Business Books South West was born and I had a chance to start to, as someone once said to me ‘creating my own empire’.
Come 2017 I’ve been in business now for five years. It’s had its ups and downs, very much up and down, but it’s been very enjoyable journey. I’ve learnt a lot and I’ve met some great people. Currently I have a good batch of clients and a lot of fun in what I do and I get to meet so many different people from so many different backgrounds. So while accounting and bookkeeping might have a very stereotypical reputation of being boring I am yet to encounter one of my colleagues like that and I’m also yet to encounter a boring part to the job. The training, the ongoing professional development, the working with clients - it all is part of what I do. So if any of you out there that are looking at getting a job in the field a I say go for it. From my experience it’s certainly been a worthwhile exercise.