Consider the following account of a veterinarian attempting to hire his first bookkeeper: Miss Harbottle, the prospective bookkeeper, paused at the desk, heaped high with incoming and outgoing bills and circulars from drug firms with here and there stray boxes of pills and tubes of udder ointment. Stirring distastefully among the mess, she extracted the dog-eared old ledger and held it up between finger and thumb. “What’s this?” Siegfried trotted forward. “Oh, that’s our ledger. We enter the visits into it from our day book, which is here somewhere.” He scrabbled about on the desk. “Ah, here it is. This is where we write the calls as they come in.” She studied the two books for a few minutes with an expression of amazement that gave way to grim humor. She straightened up slowly and spoke patiently. “And where, may I ask, is your cash box?” “Well, we just stuff it in there, you know.” Siegfried pointed to the pint pot on the corner of the mantelpiece. “Haven’t got what you’d call a proper cash box, but this does the job all right.”
Miss Harbottle looked at the pot with horror. Crumpled cheques and notes peeped over the brim at her; many of their companions had burst out on the hearth below.
“And you mean to say that you go out and leave that money there day after day?”
“Never seems to come to any harm.” Siegfried replied.
“And how about your petty cash?”
Siegfried gave an uneasy giggle. “All in there, you know. All cash—petty and otherwise.” (Excerpted from James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1972.) Situations similar to the one described here are not unusual for small businesses. How does a business survive with such bad bookkeeping?