I have started a small business on September 6th 2007. I have two sweet shops and four curry points in Hyderabad. To my surprise my turnover has reached 60-70 lacs/year in less than two years. Apart from manually keeping track of my cash flows, I haven't yet hired an accountant or a book keeper. I have also not prepared any financial statements for my business till today. I know its pretty late and should get done with creating financial statements for my business as soon as possible. My questions are,
1)I know nothing about the financial documents that are required to be maintained by small businesses in the food industry. How do I go about starting with this accounting stuff for my business? What am I required to do stepwise?
2) Should I myself enroll in an accounting course and maintain my own accounts? If yes, which is the best course and institute in Hyderabad? I am a B.Sc(comp) graduate and have no accounting knowledge.
3) How to make sure I hire a reliable accountant who will actually do his job and not just fake that he is doing it? Should I go to a CA for preparing my year end statements??
Your turnover is near about Rs. 60-70 lacs, that is higher amount for a small business.
you shpuld maintain following books as per my advice:-
Purchase book sales book debtors books creditors books cash and bank book
u can mamintain these bokks as per your own way but if u want to have a stadardised form for preparing these books then u should engege a CA because transactions will have a growing stage in future, and there are so many requiremetments in our law also to fulfill so u should engage a CA and to getting assurance whether he is a person of fairness or not u can discuss his way of maintaining the accounts via CAclubindia to your friends or experts.