Having been around since 1983, it has withstood the test of time (by the standards of the digital age), and has proven itself a highly effective solution for keeping track of a company’s money, tax liabilities, and payroll. Although QuickBooks doesn’t completely obviate the need for a certified accountant, it does put bookkeeping within the reach of small business owners and their bookkeepers. Unlike accountants, the latter generally don’t have four-year accounting degrees, but they still make good money, either on staff for a medium-sized organization or as a freelancer who takes care of the books for multiple smaller companies. Knowing how to use QuickBooks can turn into a successful career without an enormous amount of preliminary study. It can also enable you to keep your own business’s books until such time that your business expands and you need to hire a QuickBooks bookkeeper of your own.
You should be aware that QuickBooks comes in two different flavors: a desktop version that has the advantage of keeping all your information safely on one computer, and a cloud version that has the advantage of making your data accessible from anywhere. Both versions have their pluses and minuses, and the desktop version is generally considered to be the one with the more difficult learning curve. You should thus do a bit of research to determine which version is the best choice for you to learn.
Best QuickBooks Classes & Schools in Tampa
The beginning is always a very good place to start, and a class that will start you off on your QuickBooks journey is QuickBooks Online for Beginners, offered by Digital Workshop Center, a school located in Fort Collins, Colorado, that makes its classes available worldwide through the wonders of the internet. The course meets for three-and-a-half hour sessions, by the end of which you’ll have gained an understanding of small business accounting and be able to perform the most common accounting transactions with the software. Digital Workshop Center has further courses that will allow you to deepen your knowledge of QuickBooks, including one in Payroll Fundamentals, that will teach you how to manage securely, not just your own money, but other people’s money as well, which is a far more daunting task. Digital Workshop Center, in fact, has an entire QuickBooks Bookkeeper Certification program that includes the above two classes along with several others that should make it possible for you to launch yourself into bookkeeping orbit.
Computer Training Source, based out of Chicago, has its own QuickBooks classes, starting with QuickBooks Online Part 1, a one-day practical course that employs a mock company’s files to teach the software’s basic functions, including entering bills, invoices, and credit card transactions, how to set up inventory, and how to run the most often-needed reports. A follow-up class that goes into more involved functions of the software is available as well.
If you want to learn the desktop version of QuickBooks rather than the online one, Computer Training Source has you covered as well. QuickBooks Desktop Part 1 is also a one-day class that covers most of the same functions as the above course in QuickBooks Online, although many of the functions function very differently in the desktop version. The school offers a QuickBooks Desktop Part 2 class as well, which goes into such advanced features as reports, graphs, payroll, and even job costing. Most helpfully, the part 2 class is generally offered the day after the part 1 class, so you’ll be able to get a firm handle on QuickBooks and, in just 48 hours, have learned how to prevent José Gaspar from absconding with your company’s funds.
Should 48 hours be too long for you, another Chicago school, the Discovery Center, has a lightning-fast (two-and-a-half hours) evening class entitled simply QuickBooks that goes over the most basic functions of the online version of the software. Although you can’t master the software in such a short span of time, If you’re looking for a way to get your feet wet and perhaps see whether QuickBooks is right for your company, this course would be a good way to manage that.
All the above classes take place live online using teleconferencing platforms such as Zoom. Live online classes are taught by live teachers who are available for all the types of interaction that are to be found when attending a class in a brick-and-mortar school. Unlike a brick-and-mortar school, however, you don’t have to trudge to a classroom with uncomfortable chairs and glaring fluorescent lights: you can follow the class from anywhere you like, provided that there’s a sufficiently strong internet connection. That can mean home, the office, or the restaurant in the IKEA on 22nd Street (remember to try the Swedish meatballs and lingonberries when your class breaks for lunch).
Tampa Industries That Use QuickBooks
The primary users of bookkeeping software are, of course, bookkeepers. These people are responsible for the day-to-day financial tracking of the companies for which they work. Unlike accountants, who require upwards of four years of college to become CPAs, bookkeepers occupy a slightly less exalted position in the hierarchy of financial professionals. Especially where smaller companies are concerned, bookkeepers do most of the heavy lifting, and accountants are brought in only to oversee their work at the end of a month or a quarter. Bookkeepers work either full- or part-time for one company, or some of them work for bookkeeping firms that take care of the accounting needs of multiple companies.
Small business proprietors should also know how to use QuickBooks. If their businesses are very small, they may be responsible for keeping their own books; if they can afford (and have enough work for) a separate bookkeeper, they should still know how to use the software so as to keep an eye on things in general, and so as to be able to keep the business functioning when the bookkeeper is out for an emergency adventure in endodontistry. Yes, there are business owners who know nothing about their books and leave them entirely to bookkeepers, but there is every good reason in the world to understand the accounting software that’s being used to count your personal stash of beans.
A third group of people who can benefit from knowing how to use QuickBooks is accountants with clients who use the software to track their finances. You can’t oversee what you don’t understand, and all the accounting theory in the world isn’t going to help you maneuver around the QuickBooks interface without proper training in the software.
As for which industries use QuickBooks, the answer is that they all do. The Tampa/St. Petersburg/Clearwater area was ranked fifth among large US metropolitan areas(ahead of thriving Jacksonville) in number of new businesses hatched in 2022. A lot of these are startup firms and other burgeoning companies that require bookkeepers, be they tech ventures or Cuban sandwich shops. QuickBooks makes an excellent solution to all these businesses’ financial record-keeping needs.
QuickBooks Jobs & Salaries in Tampa
Figures from the United States Government Bureau of Labor Statistics classify bookkeepers under the rubric of bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks. The 2022 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics report states that there are more than 17,000 such workers in the Tampa/St. Petersburg/Clearwater metropolitan area. Their mean salary is nearly $42,000 per annum. Florida ranks fourth on the list of states in which bookkeepers and their colleagues are employed, with a statewide location quotient slightly above 1,1 representing the national average concentration of people in a given profession in a given place. The Tampa area’s location quotient is higher, 1.11, which establishes it as a good, if not quite great, city for job opportunities in the field. There are a further more than 15,000 accountants and auditors in the area (auditors are the accountants who are responsible for checking other accountants’ work), and they take home a mean annual salary of just about $82,000, as would befit their more extensive qualifications.