The next generation – Grace Tsuchida

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Xero catches up with 20-year-old junior bookkeeper Grace Tsuchida, who is already making waves at her workplace while completing her university degree.

While most teenagers finish high school with plans to relax and enjoy the summer break before heading to university, Grace Tsuchida couldn’t wait to make her mark in accounting.

“When I graduated from year 12, I thought, ‘I’m sick of not doing anything,’” says Grace. “You’ve got that period of about three months where you’re just sitting around, so I did a short course in bookkeeping and thought, ‘This is what I really want to do.’ That’s where the passion really began.”

Through word of mouth, she heard of a job opening at BYO Bookkeeping Services, where she landed a role as a junior bookkeeper two years ago and became Xero certified.

“When I first started, my boss had a new client migrating to Xero,” says Grace. It was really a lot of learning the ins and outs of the software, so that’s where I started, and I’ve handled that client since. My boss saw my work and how efficient I was, and so she trusted me with other big clients too.”

More than numbers

Grace says she is constantly learning about different types of small businesses and industries.

“Bookkeeping is so much more broad than what I had imagined. You expect to do a lot of data entry and the same thing day in and day out. There’s always something unexpected or some piece of knowledge that I thought I knew. It’s a journey and I am always learning. I don’t think I was ready for that, but I’m definitely welcoming it.”

Now in her last year of her double degree in accounting and mathematical modelling, Grace says her love for numbers is what helped her decide on a career in accounting.

“I was initially looking more towards mathematics, but it didn’t really offer much. Accounting was my next option. It had that stability, and I would still be working with numbers. I love numbers, I go crazy over numbers!”

Bookkeeping and accounting goes hand in hand

The 20-year-old juggles her time between working at BYO and studying but says there is common ground between the two.

“A lot of the beginning of accounting is bookkeeping, and so it really resonates with me when lecturers talk about the early stages and make that link between what I’m doing now as a bookkeeper and what I will be doing when I’m qualified.”

After she graduates from Deakin University next year, Grace hopes to carry on at BYO in an advisory role to help businesses go beyond the numbers.

“I’d like to offer more management reporting and job costing. Optimisation is really where I want to be, to help a business optimise what it can give and what it wants. It’s not always about the most profit.”

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