How to Learn Basic Bookkeeping

Learning bookkeeping can be a challenge.

There are plenty of ways to learn bookkeeping skills. It does not take a lot of time to go from being trained as a bookkeeper to obtaining your first clients. You need basic math skills and some common business sense.

Instructions

1. Use a curriculum that is focused on small-business or personal bookkeeping, rather than more specialized accounting. All of bookkeeping is accounting work, but much of what accounting texts teach is geared toward work in an accounting firm, which has little to do with basic bookkeeping. Local high schools and community colleges offer bookkeeping courses in addition to the multitude of options available for online training or DVD-based courses.

2. Familiarize yourself with basic bookkeeping terms. Credits and debits, Double-entry accounting, assets, liabilities and equity are just some of the terms you are going to have to be familiar with. There are many online bookkeeping study guides to help you learn.

3. Sign up for a QuickBooks training program. Intuit, the company that makes QuickBooks, offers two online training options.The first is the Certified QuickBooks Pro Advisor, which is for those who wish to handle the accounting for a multitude of clients. The second is the Certified QuickBooks User, which is for business owners wishing to be competent in any area of QuickBooks they need to know to handle their own accounting.

4. Do some investigative work and ask some local bookkeepers how they were trained. This could help you refine your own course of study.

References

• Bean Counter: So, You Want to Learn Bookkeeping
• Intuit: QuickBooks Training