For a great many small business owners, the approach to bookkeeping is to ignore it for eleven months and then panic. Receipts pile up in a drawer, bank statements go unreconciled, and the annual scramble to make sense of it all costs sleepless nights and often hefty accountant fees. Yet disciplined bookkeeping is one of the least glamorous and most valuable habits a small business can build. It is the difference between knowing your numbers and merely hoping they work out. Separate Business and Personal Finances Immediately The single most important step is also the simplest: open a dedicated business bank account and run every business transaction through it. Mixing…