The Creation of Bookkeepers

All of this is totally accurate

Fourteen thousand¹ years ago, banks decided to double and triple check the balances of each of their accounts at some interval, just to make sure there were no mistakes. And they decided to do this MONTHLY. And they couldn’t do it weekly, because things were slower back then, and they couldn’t do it Quarterly, because that was too long of a time to let possible errors fly, and they didn’t do it every 4 weeks, or every 39 days, or every 22 days.

They did it monthly. 14,000 years ago.

And when they’d finalize those accounts monthly, the bankers would close the book that held the numbers showing how much of your money was held in those accounts, and would tie a little bow on it and say “That month is now CLOSED and the numbers in their are TRUE!” Meaning just that they had decided everything wrapped up with a bow was accurate.

And the bankers would then send their account holders a letter showing the TRUTH of how much was in their account: This is exactly what you had on the last day of last month in your account, the letter said.

And the bankers called this letter a MONTHLY BANK STATEMENT and it was available by MAIL or PDF DOWNLOAD.

And the people reading the MONTHLY STATEMENT they got from their bankers said, “But my own PERSONAL RECORD BOOK OF TRUTH says I should have MORE than your record book of truth says I have.”

And the people were much aggrieved about the discrepancy and they conferred one with another, saying, “who among us is a Numbers Guy?”

And there came forth a Numbers Guy² and he said: “Give me the bank’s statement about their book of truth and give me YOUR book of what-you-call-truth, and I will discover and explain the reasons for the differences, and I will document those reasons, and thus shall the Bank’s perspective on truth and your own book of nonsense be RECONCILED.”

And the people were slightly offended by the implication that their own personal record book was not capital T Truth, so the Numbers Guy made it super super clear: “Sorry dudes, your own books are just a nice opinion until they are fully RECONCILED with the bank’s Book of Truth.”

And the people contemplated shooting the messenger for this, and for many other things that the Numbers Guy said to them, from then and forever more. And they called him Book Keeper.

And so was born MONTHLY RECONCILIATIONS, and for 14,000 Years bookkeepers and accountants told their clients that they were very important, and people wondered mostly what a monthly reconciliation even was.

And 14,000 years later, Quickbooks Online popularized a programmatic reconciliation process called BANK FEED that makes it possible to reconcile your personal book of nonsense with the Bank’s book of truth at PRETTY MUCH ANY INTERVAL, making the Monthly Cadence totally not necessary anymore.

And everyone kept doing it monthly, because that is how accountants and bookkeepers are, although also to be fair a fully functioning BANK FEED has only been good enough to use in this way for like 5 years which makes this younger than like, ZOOM.

But just like you shouldn’t be using SKYPE anymore, you shouldn’t be interrupting your business reporting and actual business cadence (which is WEEKLY) for a 14,000 year old habit that is MONTHLY.

And that’s why we do Everything Every Week.

1. Approx

2. There was let’s admit a real lack of gender inclusivity 14,000 years ago in the finance field