How to Learn Excel & Bookkeeping at Home in One Day

Teach yourself an in-demand skill.

Microsoft Excel is a powerful tool for creating financial spreadsheets and bookkeeping documents. This program is widely used in the business world, and knowing how to use it can give your career a boost. Learning a bookkeeping program like Quick Books can enhance your career as well. You can teach yourself basic skills in these popular programs in a single day.

Things You'll Need

• QuickBooks
• Excel

Instructions

1. Create a list of documents you want to create with Microsoft Excel. You will learn the program faster if you create documents that are meaningful to you. Consider creating a personal or business budget, or a set of invoices for your customers.

2. Log on to the Microsoft website and download templates for each of the documents you wish to create. Microsoft provides hundreds of free templates for Microsoft Excel, covering everything from creating a debt management plan to building a corporate budget.

3. Download the templates you wish to use. It is helpful to download several different templates for the same document, i.e. two budget templates, two credit card templates. This allows you to compare the approaches the two templates use to build the same type of document.

4. Work with the templates you have downloaded to create the documents you need. As you type your own information into the template, note how the totals automatically update. Place your cursor over those total fields to see the syntax of the formulas. Exploring templates is one of the best ways to learn the formulas Excel uses.

5. Install Quick Books on your computer and open the program. Use the program's tutorial and samples to learn the bookkeeping you will need to create invoices, keep track of expenses and plan for taxes.

Tips & Warnings

• Visit your local library for books on how to use these programs. There are a couple of well-known series, like the Dummies series, that cut to the chase. The National Bookkeepers Association produces a learning guide for QuickBooks.

References

• Microsoft Office; Budget Templates
• National Bookkeepers Association: QuickBooks Training: Members Pricing for QuickBooks Learning Guide 2010

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish