Outsourced Business Assistant Manager
Lorraine joined the OBS team at Wisteria in April 2023 and enjoys working alongside other team staff as they bring the best out of her.
After Lorraine completed her accountancy studies, she worked in various accounting and finance roles for small and medium sized businesses and believes every number in accounting has a story behind it.
Lorraine lives with her family in London. Her life is like accounting, where she tries to balance everything, so in her spare time, she enjoys theatres, poetry, complementary therapies, green nature spaces and community projects.
Her beliefs are that accountants can save the world, through peace, goodwill, and reconciliations.
What led you to pursue a career in your current role, and how did you get started in the field?
I was involved in helping my family businesses at a young age and discovered that bookkeepers play a vital part of the smooth running of businesses to ensure their finances are being managed, recorded, and spent in the most effective way.
There I saw a great opportunity for me to pursue a career path as a bookkeeper and the chance to help other businesses grow into the next decade and beyond.
What do you enjoy most about your job, and what do you find most challenging?
What makes bookkeeping very enjoyable for me is being able to help and interact with many types of businesses on a daily basis. Besides tracking and recording transactions, being able to dig deeper into financial reports and banking issues to resolve issues and discrepancies are equally rewarding.
Also, in Wisteria, the OBS team is a part of a large network with other professionals, such as accounts production, audit and taxation and business administration, which means, I am constantly learning while building working relationships.
The lack of accurate records can make the job challenging. The lack of time keeping can be a disadvantage to bookkeeping, as collecting financial data, adding new information, tracking errors, and maintaining the records can be time consuming and can hinder timely business decisions.
What do you believe are the most important qualities for success in your current role, and how do you strive to embody those qualities in your work?
Whoever created the word ‘Bookkeeping” must be logical thinker with a head for numbers, as it is the only English word to contain three sets of double letters back-to-back.
The most important qualities for success, therefore, includes logical thinking, problem-solving, organised and knowledge of where the numbers are each month, and to identify where the problems are, and where the successes are.
