It has been around since 1983 and, thanks to international versions and support even for cryptocurrencies, has made significant inroads on the global market as well. QuickBooks can track everything from invoices and bills to payroll and job costing. It can even write letters. It doesn’t quite make certified accountants obsolete, but it does put most bookkeeping duties into the hands of bookkeepers and small business owners, who need only call in an accountant at the end of the month or quarter to make sure that the books are ship-shape.
Bookkeepers are hard-working, respected professionals who either are kept on staff by businesses that are big enough to need someone full (or maybe just part-) time, or who work for bookkeeping firms that service multiple companies that don’t need someone that frequently. Given how widely used the software is, knowing how to use QuickBooks can open the doors to a bookkeeping career, or can make it possible for you to keep your own business’s books if your company isn’t big enough to warrant bringing in a dedicated bookkeeper.
Be apprised of the fact that there are two distinct versions of QuickBooks and that they are more different from they are similar. There is a desktop version and a cloud-based one, and each has its own set of advantages. QuickBooks Desktop puts all your delicate financial information safely on one computer, while QuickBooks Online puts it in the cloud, with the advantage that you can access it from anywhere. The desktop version is better at producing reports and (especially) graphs, while the online version is capable of processing international payments. The learning curves are different as well: the received wisdom is that the cloud version is the easier to learn of the two. You should look into the pros and cons of both versions before you decide on which version you want to learn to use.
Best QuickBooks Classes & Schools in Detroit
Headquartered in Fort Collins, Colorado, Digital Workshop Center has an online QuickBooks Online for Beginners. Comprising 10 ½ hours of live instruction, it begins by spending some time on small business accounting principles before proceeding to QuickBooks. You’ll learn how to set up a business, establish a chart of accounts, generate estimates, create invoices, and print receipts. If you want a deeper dive into the hows and whys of accounting, Digital Workshop Center also provides a Bookkeeping Fundamentals class. If you want more QuickBooks, you can learn how to handle payroll in the school’s Payroll Fundamentals class. And, if you want all the above and more, Digital Workshop Center has an entire QuickBooks Bookkeeper Certification program that is designed expressly to launch its students into bookkeeping roles. There isn’t a great deal of QuickBooks certificate programs; if you’re serious about a career change, you could do worse than consider this one.
If you simply want to learn how to use QuickBooks for your regular bookkeeping needs, you probably don’t need a certificate. A class or two ought to suffice such as the one-day QuickBooks Online Part 1 from Computer Training Source in Chicago. All the basics of the cloud-based version of the software are covered in the class. And, should your thirst for knowledge of QuickBooks be insatiable, you can look into the school’s follow-up part two course after you’ve finished part one.
You can go even briefer than that with the QuickBooks class from Discovery Center, Chicago’s “lifelong learning center” that teaches classes in everything from stained glass to how to play bridge. Its QuickBooks class lasts only two-and-a-half hours, but manages to teach students the most fundamental fundamentals of the cloud-based version of the software, and offers enough of a taste of QuickBooks to determine whether you wish to proceed with the software for your business.
All the above are classes in QuickBooks Online. If you want to take on the desktop version, you can turn to Computer Training Center again, and its QuickBooks Desktop Part 1. The course takes place in a single day and covers much of the same territory as its sister class in the cloud-based QuickBooks. You can come back the next day for further instruction in the form of QuickBooks Desktop Part 2, which will take you through payroll, job costing, and all manner of reports and graphs.
There is a severe dearth of live in-person classes in QuickBooks in Detroit. The realities of the educational market are such that nearly all courses in the software have moved online. Fear not too much: people have been learning from live online classes for a couple of decades already. Live online classes allow you to engage the teacher when you need to ask a question while enabling you to learn without having to inhale the poisonous cologne of the random stranger sitting next to you. You can follow your class from just about anywhere, be that at home, at your office (if you have one), or any place with a solid internet connection that allows for streaming such as Great Lakes Coffee in Midtown, where you can accompany your QuickBooks class with something called a lavender latte, and then take advantage of their liquor license for a celebratory glass of wine after your school day is over.
Detroit Industries That Use QuickBooks
Given QuickBooks’ daunting market share, you can assume that it’s used by most small businesses in Detroit, be they your favorite hole-in-the-wall haven for a coney or a new tech start-up. (Detroit is famous for both: there are even tech insiders who see a new Silicon Valley in Detroit, so good is the city’s tech forecast. And there will always be hot dogs with chili sauce, onions, and mustard in Motor City). Few, if any, are the small businesses that couldn’t benefit from QuickBooks for their accounting needs. Thus, Detroiter bookkeepers can find themselves tracking expenditures for practically every type of business under the sun.
Bookkeepers are the people charged with the recording of daily financial transactions, preparation of payroll, and creation of reports to show business owners how much money they have. Although they don’t have the four-year accounting degrees that chartered (certified) accountants do, bookkeepers are of vital importance to the operation of a business, especially the smaller ones that only bring in accountants at the end of the quarter or the month to make sure the bookkeeper’s work fulfills the accounting equation. Larger small businesses often have bookkeepers on staff; the smaller ones tend to employ bookkeepers from bookkeeping firms that manage the finances of multiple companies. A dollar will get you less than two that most of Motor City’s bookkeeping firms depend on QuickBooks to get their jobs done.
Other people can benefit from a knowledge of QuickBooks as well. Business owners are at the top of this list: knowing how to use QuickBooks can allow you to keep your own books while your business is in its infancy, and have them ready to be handed off to a bookkeeper when the time comes. This will allow you to see what’s happening with the company without endlessly having to ask the bookkeeper how much is in the till. There are business owners who let their bookkeepers shoulder all the record-keeping burdens, but if it were you, wouldn’t you want to know how to use the bookkeeping software?
Accountants need to know how to use QuickBooks as well. There’s even a whole version of the software designed just for them. If they have clients whose bookkeepers use QuickBooks, they’re going to need to know how to operate the software when it comes time for them to perform their tasks. Those include the not unimportant duty of preparing the company’s taxes. QuickBooks, therefore, isn’t just for bookkeepers: people from freelancers to CPAs need to know their way around the software if they’re to know their way around their own businesses, be they based in Detroit or in the remotest expanses of the Upper Peninsula.
QuickBooks Jobs & Salaries in Detroit
Occupational Wage and Employment Statistics (OEWS) gathered by the United States Department of Labor designate Detroit as the central pillar of the Detroit/Warren/Dearborn metropolitan area. In the area, a total of 1,866,500 people were employed in 2022, working for an annual mean wage of $62,000. Of those people, approximately 15,800 were employed as bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks, which makes for a location quotient of 0.81. That means that the density of employed bookkeepers (and other accounting clerks) in Detroit is lower than the national average. The mean wage for these workers is roughly $47,000, which is below not only the mean wage in the area but also the national average for the field. (If you’re curious, the state with the highest location quotient for bookkeepers is South Dakota, but it doesn’t fare at all well in the wage department). Nevertheless, bookkeeping jobs exist in Detroit, and the road to them unquestionably leads through a class in QuickBooks.