Data Entry Service
Every report you will ever read about your business is built from individual entries. Get those right and everything above them gets easier.
- Bookkeeping & accounting
- Accurate & organized
- Work directly with the owner
- Call, email or WhatsApp
The pile that never gets entered
A shoebox of receipts. A bank feed with four months of unmatched lines. Invoices sitting in an email folder, some paid, some not, nobody quite sure which. When owners say the books are behind, this is usually what they mean: the raw information exists, and it has never been entered anywhere useful.
Data entry is the least glamorous part of bookkeeping and the one everything else depends on. A profit and loss is only a sum of entries. If an entry is missing, doubled, dated wrong or filed under the wrong category, the report inherits the mistake, and no amount of review at the end can see a transaction that was never recorded.
Data entry is one of the services JE Ledger offers. The rest of this page covers what accurate entry takes, so you can judge the state of your own records before you call.
What an accurate entry contains
Each transaction needs the same few things: the date it happened, the amount, who it was with, what it was for, and which account it belongs in. It also needs something behind it, a receipt, an invoice or a statement line, so that anyone can later check the entry against its source.
Consistency matters as much as accuracy. When a supplier appears under three spellings, reports split one relationship into three. When one person files fuel under vehicles and another under travel, neither total means anything. Good entry uses the same names and the same categories every time, which is dull, and is also the reason the reports end up readable.
Where entry errors come from
A handful of mistakes cause the bulk of the trouble. A bank feed imports a payment, then somebody enters the same bill by hand, and the expense is counted twice. A transfer between two business accounts gets recorded as income. One card payment covered three different things and went into a single category. A personal purchase on the business card never got separated out.
Each of these looks harmless in isolation. Together they produce books that are full, tidy and wrong. The way to catch them is to reconcile every account against its statement as the entries go in, rather than hoping the totals look plausible at year end.
Keeping the paper behind the numbers
Entries without support are hard to defend. The IRS explains how long to keep records in its guidance on how long to keep records: generally for as long as the period of limitations for the return they support, which in the ordinary case is three years, and at least four years for employment tax records. Some situations call for longer.
The practical point is that a receipt should be findable from its entry, not just stored somewhere. Attaching the image to the transaction, or filing paper by month and account, turns a request for backup into a two minute job instead of an afternoon of searching.
Catching up versus keeping up
Entering a backlog is a different job from staying current. A year of unentered transactions is best worked account by account and month by month, reconciling each month before moving to the next, so that errors are caught while the trail is still short. Trying to enter everything at once and reconcile at the end tends to leave a difference nobody can explain.
Once the backlog is clear, keeping up is mostly a matter of rhythm. A little each week is far cheaper than a lot each spring.
What is a data entry service in bookkeeping?
Bookkeeping data entry is the work of recording each business transaction, with its date, amount, counterparty, purpose and account, from the source documents: receipts, invoices, bank and card statements. Done well, every entry is consistent, supported by a document you can find again, and reconciled against the account statement so nothing is missing or counted twice. It is the layer every financial report is built on. JE Ledger offers data entry service. Call (305) 748-1367 to describe the state of your records.
Office hours: Monday to Friday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM.
Data Entry Service FAQs
Do paper receipts still work?
Yes. A paper receipt is a record like any other. What matters is that each one can be matched to the transaction it supports and found again later. Scanning them and attaching the image to the entry is the easiest way to keep that link.
How long should I keep receipts and statements?
The IRS says to keep records as long as they may be needed for a tax return, generally three years in the ordinary case and at least four years for employment tax records, with longer periods in some situations. Its page on how long to keep records sets out the cases.
Is a bank feed enough on its own?
It helps, but it only tells you that money moved. It does not say what a payment was for, it can double up with entries made by hand, and it cannot split one payment across categories. A feed still needs someone to categorize, match and reconcile what it brings in.
What would JE Ledger handle?
Start by telling Javier where the records live today and how far behind they are. He will tell you what he would take on and how he would approach it.
What does data entry cost?
It depends on the volume of transactions, how many accounts are involved, and whether there is a backlog. Call (305) 748-1367 or email [email protected] with a rough picture and you will get a straight answer.
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Where to Next
Keep reading, or get in touch and tell us where the books stand.