6 best bookkeeping books for small businesses

If you’re new to running a small business, you may also be new to organising your own finances. But having a fundamental knowledge of financial management is essential to your business’s success. 

Bookkeeping, or recording the money entering and exiting your business, is a legal requirement and an integral part of tracking performance. Thankfully, if you don’t have experience with it, plenty of books can help.  

This guide covers six of the best bookkeeping books for small business, including:

• Bookkeeping for Small Business by Andy Lymer and Nick Rowbottom.
• Bookkeeping and Accounting All in One For Dummies by Jane Kelly.
• Bookkeeping: An Essential Guide to Bookkeeping for Beginners by Robert McCarthy.
• Do it Yourself Bookkeeping for Small Businesses by Michael Collins.
• Accounting QuickStart Guide by Josh Bauerle. 
• The Best Small Business Accounts Book by Peter Hingston.

When it comes to bookkeeping, your experience as a small business will differ from larger corporations. Since you work on a smaller scale, different approaches and organisations will help you maintain accuracy.

To make this happen, you need books that focus on you. That’s why Bookkeeping for Small Business by Andy Lymer and Nick Rowbottom is a great pick.

In this book, Lymer and Rowbottom explore the small business accounting experience and prepare you for an accurate and skilled future in bookkeeping. 

This book breaks up bookkeeping into 20 digestible chapters, from definitions to analysis and interpretation. Plus, there are FAQs at the beginning of the book to clarify some common issues.

Also see: The best bookkeeping practices for small business. 

The For Dummies collection is always a great place to look for simple and valuable information. 

With Bookkeeping and Accounting All in One For Dummies by Jane Kelly, you can learn the foundations of accounting and bookkeeping. In fact, this combines six books in one to let you access all the important information in a manageable way. 

It’s the ultimate guide to learning the basics of setting up your bookkeeping methods. Plus, it simplifies the process and helps you break it down into months, quarters, and years. 

Overall, this book is great to keep as a reference guide while setting up and growing your business over time.

Next, Bookkeeping by Robert McCarthy breaks down the complex pieces of bookkeeping using simple and comprehensible language. This book focuses on the beginner’s experience, so you won’t struggle to follow along. 

He also offers tips and tricks to improve your process and make it more efficient. Plus, McCarthy covers the main accounting principles so you can set up bookkeeping that’s legal and compliant. 

Do it Yourself Bookkeeping for Small Businesses by Michael Collins is another of the best bookkeeping books for small businesses. Collins offers you the skills to set your financial accounting up for success. 

This book also focuses on independent management to learn effective tactics for solo bookkeepers.  

Not only does he cover the fundamentals, but Collins also explains how to create an easy to follow bookkeeping system for your business. On top of this, he discusses how to organise your paperwork and reduce the stress of bookkeeping.  

With Josh Bauerle’s Accounting QuickStart Guide, you can quickly grow your understanding of bookkeeping and accounting from an experienced accountant. 

This book focuses on business owners as well as professionals and students. It teaches the basics so you can approach your finances with confidence. 

Though it doesn’t focus only on bookkeeping, general accounting knowledge is important for small businesses, and it can help with your bookkeeping.  

Plus, the book offers free digital resources you can engage with to support your learning. With this, you’ll learn critical accounting information and how to put it into practice. 

The list wouldn’t be complete without an actual bookkeeping ledger, like The Best Small Business Accounts Book by Peter Hingston. This book is a great way to understand your bookkeeping process by doing. 

In this book, Hingston provides a framework for organising your books, focusing on non-VAT registered businesses. Hingston designed this book specifically for sole traders who are new to bookkeeping. 

Plus, there is a blue and yellow book, each listing careers and businesses best suited to that format. For example, the blue book is best for designers, builders, and landscapers. 

The straightforward format can help you stay on top of everything as you start writing down your business transactions. Still, you may want to keep digital records as well in case the book gets lost or damaged. 

You can also find the version for VAT registered businesses here.

As you read up on these best bookkeeping books for small business, you can prepare yourself for strong financial management. This knowledge makes it far easier to stay accurate and under control.

If you’d like to grow your bookkeeping knowledge further, you may want to check out some of our articles on similar topics, such as: 

• The importance of bookkeeping in small business.  
• Bookkeeping vs accounting: What’s the difference?
• How to understand financial accounting. 

While these books can develop your bookkeeping skills, you can also use tools to simplify and save time on bookkeeping, like Countingup. 

Countingup is the business current account and accounting software in one app. It automates time-consuming bookkeeping admin for thousands of self-employed people across the UK. 

Save yourself hours of accounting admin so you can focus on growing your business. 

Start your three-month free trial today. 

Apply now.