You should not confuse the services of a bookkeeper with the services you receive from your accountant, although both are equally important each offers a specific set of skills.
Your accountant is concerned with compliance and tax planning and reporting your end of year accounts and tax calculations to HM Revenue & Customs and Companies House. Accountants are not really concerned with the day to day running of your business but with your end of year figures. This is where a good bookkeeper enters the equation. The service of a skilled bookkeeper organizes and processes all of your financial transactions by taking all of your paperwork sorting and processing it intelligently on a software package. A good bookkeeper will reconcile your business bank account so no vital expenses are missed from your VAT calculations. In accurately processing your data this highlights who owes you money (Debtors) and who you owe money to (Creditors). You would be surprised how many clients pay the same invoice twice this can be a costly error but one a good bookkeeper will pick up on.
Bookkeeping is very much an underplayed role but is crucially a very important one. What is critical is to release your valuable time so you can concentrate on generating new sales and new potential customers and let us take care of implementing an effective bookkeeping system that adds value to your business.