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A serial entrepreneur Aaron Sylvan who lives in New York, contrasts the circumstances to requiring to hire both a carpenter and an architect when building a house. An accountant can analyze the big picture of your financial situation and offer strategic advice as he/she produces key financial documents, like profit-and-loss statement, if needed, and files a company's taxes. An accountant can also act as an outsourced chief financial officer, advising an entrepreneur on financial strategies, like whether to secure a line of credit against receivables when introducing new products after tax season is over On the contrary, a bookkeeper's jobs are the day-to-day hands-on tasks: making sure new employees file all the right paperwork for the company's payroll, submitting invoices (promptly) and following up on them, and paying the bills. The bookkeeper also tracks company expenses or company financial statements and can assure that every cost has been entered - and recorded correctly - into software like QuickBooks so that the business is ready for tax time along with filing any other reporting to, say, creditors or investors. "I don't keep receipts; they're a pain," says Sylvan, who runs Sylvan Social Technology, an ecommerce-services company. "Every month I get a bank statement with a gazillion transactions," such as taxi rides, meals, conferences and other expenses he has placed on his company's debit card. He said his bookkeeper spends a few hours a week sorting it all out. Consequently, Sylvan has a better idea about how his expenditures stack up in opposition to his budget. He is certain he won't bill clients wrongly or miss important payments. "Knowledge is power," even when it comes to the small details, Sylvan says. "If you don't have a bookkeeper, you're probably not being as strategic as you could be in how you spend your money." When to Bring in a Bookkeeper Sylvan has typically hired a bookkeeper for a few hour

"It will be very painful and even feel like cutting one's wrist." So predicted Li Keqiang, China's premier, as he discussed the task ahead of him during his first press conference last March. Not the most inviting prospect for investors looking to make a play on China. But they should certainly take heed of these words. Li is the man who, together with president Xi Jinping, must lead a reform programme regarded by analysts as the most fundamental in decades. It will affect almost every part of an economy worth $9.4tn (Britain's annual output, for comparison, is $2.4tn). So what are these reforms? And why does China's new leader think that their implementation will be so painful? There are three key areas which investors should note.

WASHINGTON (AP) - October 1, 2013 (WPVI) -- Campers in national parks are to pull up stakes and leave, some veterans waiting to have disability benefits approved will have to cool their heels even longer, many routine food inspections will be suspended and panda-cams will go dark at the shuttered National Zoo. Those are among the immediate effects when parts of the government shut down Tuesday because of the budget impasse in Congress. A look at what is bound to happen, and what probably won't: ___ THIS: Possible delays in processing new disability applications. BUT NOT THIS: Social Security and Medicare benefits still keep coming. ___ THIS: Washington's paralysis will be felt early on in distant lands as well as in the capital - namely, at national parks. All park services will close. Campers have 48 hours to leave their sites. Many parks, such as Yellowstone, will close to traffic, and some will become completely inaccessible. Smithsonian museums in Washington will close and so will the zoo, where panda cams record every twitch and cuddle of the panda cub born Aug. 23 but are to be turned off in the first day of a shutdown. The Statue of Liberty in New York, the loop road at Acadia National Park in Maine, Skyline Drive in Virginia, and Philadelphia's Independence National Historical Park, home of Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, will be off limits. At Grand Canyon National Park, people will be turned back from entrance gates and overlooks will be cordoned off along a state road inside the park that will remain open. "People who waited a year to get a reservation to go to the bottom of the Grand Canyon all of a sudden will find themselves without an opportunity to take that trip," said Mike Litterst, a spokesman for the National Park Service. More Financial News: http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1037871 http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1036282