Last week 32 informal traders in Sub Council 1 – Atlantis/Du Noon – were trained in bookkeeping skills.
The training was made available by the City of Cape Town’s Urban Management Directorate, through its Area Economic Development Department.
The three-day training session took place in Atlantis on Wednesday 5 May. This intervention was the result of a survey conducted by the Area Economic Development Department, which found informal traders identified bookkeeping as crucial, Grant Twigg, Mayco Committee Member for Urban Management, said.
“Bookkeeping is vital to any business because it makes it so much easier to budget,” Twigg told informal traders during the training .
“With your income and expenses properly organised it’s simple to review your financial resources and costs, and improve planning.”
He stressed the need to keep accurate and up-to-date books.
“It’s a lot harder to get an accurate budget, because it’s all mainly guesswork, which may inevitably lead to financial losses and deficits. As part of the commitment to empower traders and small businesses the City heeded the call from traders for basic accounting and bookkeeping training to capacitate and upskill the traders.”
During the three days traders learned about accounting terminologies, accounting for transactions, identifying source/sales documents, journal entries and preparing income statements, among many others skills.
Twigg encouraged the traders to participate in the discussions and when managing their businesses to apply the knowledge learnt in the training.
