It is the market leader by more than just a substantial margin: it’s a 4 to 1 shot that, if you’re looking for a small company at which to work, that company will be using QuickBooks for its accounting needs. That’s not to say that you have to work for a small company, but if you do, be prepared for QuickBooks. It’s perhaps not as universal a workplace skill as Word or Excel, but learning how to use the software can yield considerable rewards.
Before you set off to learn how to use the software, you should be aware that Intuit basically makes two different products and calls both of them QuickBooks. There is, first of all, the desktop version (recte: QuickBooks Pro/Premier/Enterprise), which can lay claim to being the Ur-QuickBooks, and is, overall, capable of more than the other version, QuickBooks Online. As that name suggests, that version of QuickBooks casts your data to the four winds so that you can access them from wherever you like, as opposed to only from the desktop computer on which your information is stored if you use QuickBooks Pro. Intuit has engineered things so that there is no one QuickBooks version that can do everything: you thus have to consider both, what they do, and who uses them before you can make a properly informed decision about which version of the software you want to learn (or, at the very least, learn first).
Once you’ve decided on which version of QuickBooks you’re going to learn, you’ll next be confronted with the question of what kind of class to attend. These fall into three categories: in-person, live online, and self-paced online, although the self-paced category divides itself between paid and free classes (such as YouTube tutorials). While there is no absolute right answer to the question of which teaching method is best, one of them probably suits you better than the others. What follows here should help you determine what is the best way for you to learn QuickBooks.
Enroll in In-Person QuickBooks Classes
Since your first day of kindergarten, you were taught that teaching and learning take place in a classroom, that is to say a room shared by teachers and their students, with the teacher at one end of the room equipped with a vertical writing service, and the students gathered in front of it. You may have gone to a progressive kindergarten where you sat on the floor, but by the first grade, you were probably sitting at a little desk that got bigger and bigger as you grew. When you had a question (or had to go to the bathroom), you were trained to raise your hand to get the teacher’s attention. Otherwise, you were encouraged to sit quietly and listen.
That’s how school worked, and continued to work throughout high school and into college, and beyond: even graduate seminars for Ph. D. students still consist of that vertical writing surface/circle of acolytes paradigm. It’s the way you were taught to learn, and quite a few people (including older students who didn’t have computers when they went to school) cling to the notion that that’s the only pedagogical modality out there.
It’s certainly a good and time-tested one. Arguably the thing that sharing a room with a teacher has most to recommend is the way your hippocampus is wired to assimilate new information coming from that authority figure standing at that vertical writing surface.
That’s not to say that learning in a live in-person class is your only option, nor is it to say that the in-person learning set-up is devoid of defects. Indeed, the greatest of these is big indeed: inconvenience. The rules of spacetime are such that you’re going to need to travel to get to a class with an in-person teacher. Just how big the inconvenience is depends on whence you’re starting out: you could live across the street from a QuickBooks school, in which case the objection is moot. On the other hand, business IT schools tend to be in business districts, which can make for a commute that becomes more onerous every time you have to make it.
Other downsides to live in-person classes involve the space and your classmates. Whatever the weather is outside, someone is going to have something to say about the air conditioning (or, worse, lack thereof), and the person complaining can be an even bigger annoyance than the heat or cold. There are other potential difficulties when it comes to learning in a classroom: uncomfortable plastic chairs, very tall people sitting in front of you, and unfamiliar computer equipment that persists in doing something irritating to which you’re unaccustomed. The teacher may mumble or, worse, talk too loud. Fluorescent lights overhead also don’t exactly add to the ambiance. Then comes the matter of the person sitting next to you. While someone in an IT class somewhere must have found a soulmate in the seat next to them, odds are you’re going to find someone annoying rather than a potential life partner. And the less inured you are to classroom education (the more removed from school you’ve gotten), the more likely you are to be driven to distraction by gum-crackers, leg-shakers, and under-the-table texters.
There’s also a very good chance that, unless you live in a major city, you’ll have trouble finding a live QuickBooks class in your immediate vicinity. And, unless you live in New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago, even if there is a class near where you live, there’s probably only going to be one from which to choose. Your selection of possible classes will grow exponentially if you’re willing to consider other options.
Attend Live Online QuickBooks Classes
The next option, next-best to in-person learning and better according to some, is the live online class. In this modality, you’re wherever you want to be with regard to space, and you only have to be together with the teacher in time. You’ll be situated at your computer and connected to the classroom (which may or may not have in-person students) via Zoom or some other teleconferencing platform. This makes it possible for you to interact with the teacher in real-time and ask questions when you’re not sure of something. The technology is such that the teacher can even take a peek at your screen should you have gotten hopelessly muddled setting up your chart of accounts.
This means you’re able to study just about anywhere. All you really need is a computer, a horizontal surface to put it on, and a stable internet connection with adequate bandwidth to stream audio and video (if you can stream Netflix or Disney+, you’re good to go for a QuickBooks class). You can study in the comfort of your own home, in your office, at the San José Cemetery in Granada (Spain), as you climb Mt. Fuji, and even from the International Space Station (yes, they all have wifi). This convenience simply can’t be beaten, nor can the view from Mt. Fuji, assuming that you, a small business owner, can afford a vacation to Japan as yet.
Although it’s at long last in the cultural rear-view mirror, the Coronavirus pandemic stranded a lot of kids in their homes and forced them to learn via internet hookup. The results were, admittedly, pretty miserable. But these were classes for kids, who go to school every day for reasons that go beyond merely learning stuff, and need the chance to socialize with other children. Kids should have recess for running around and cupcakes when one of their fellows has a birthday.
When you’re an adult trying to pick up a new business skill, on the other hand, none of that applies: you come to a live online class with the single goal of learning QuickBooks, and don’t need recess or cupcakes or the chance to socialize. As a result, the very real disadvantages of studying online for kids become advantages for adults. You can concentrate on the class from a room of your own without distractions, although, admittedly, you’re not likely to make a new best friend in the process.
You should make sure that you can work someplace where you won’t be disturbed. Information comes pretty fast and furiously in most QuickBooks classes, and that’s not ideally compatible with having to take the dog for a walk or get the kids an after-school snack. If you’re taking your class at work, and you’ve yet to get your own office with solid walls and a door, see whether you can’t get a private space from which to follow your class. A lock on the door can probably be your biggest learning asset once you’ve gotten yourself connected to the internet. No disrespect to the dog, but you should figure out a way to corral the pooch so as not to be disturbed as you try to figure out the arcana of QuickBooks lists. Learning from home can be fraught with distractions; do your best to minimize these before you sit down to begin your studies.
All in all, a live online class can be a highly productive learning experience. It’s probably also the learning modality of the future, although you should be more concerned with the fact that it’s the learning modality of the present. You may need a little time to adjust to learning online, but if you’re like most adults, you’ll likely find it a new and even somewhat exciting way to increase your IT knowledge.
Sign up for On-Demand Online QuickBooks Classes
The in-person class requires that you and the teacher share the same spatial and temporal coordinates, and you can’t take such a class unless you can fulfill those physical requirements. While the online course is a great deal more lenient when it comes to spatial coordinates, you still have to occupy the same location in time as your teacher. Again, if you cannot fulfill that condition, you can’t take a live online QuickBooks class.
For the most part, online QuickBooks classes take place on weekdays during the day. A few classes do take place in the evenings, but these are the exceptions. You can also juggle the time of a live class somewhat by clever manipulation of time zones. If, however, you’re a very busy person with commitments throughout the day, you may not be able to fit a live online class into your schedule. What to do then?
You have a few options. One of them is buying a book and teaching yourself QuickBooks. Most people, however, aren’t born autodidacts. Fortunately, the in-person and live online classes haven’t exhausted the possibilities for learning QuickBooks in a scholastic environment.
You also have at your disposal the world of the on-demand, self-paced or asynchronous class, in which you get a teacher, but you don’t have to be in the same place as the teacher, either in space or in time. Essentially, an on-demand course is a series of video tutorials in which a human teacher (at least the teachers are human for the time being) talks “to” you and teaches you how to use QuickBooks, one lesson at a time. Sometimes these lessons are very brief and bite-sized, sometimes they take the form of longer lectures, but you’re always in control of how much material goes by and how quickly you assimilate it. If you want to learn QuickBooks at three o’clock in the morning, your best bet is going to be a class like this, which, while still requiring your full attention, doesn’t require your being anywhere in particular on the spacetime continuum. It may even be a teaching modality that is compatible with time travel, although that does rather remain to be seen.
The on-demand class has its shortcomings, the biggest and most obvious of which is that you’re not able to raise your hand and ask the teacher a question when you start to get muddled. There’s no getting around that drawback, and you’ll have to figure out some other way of getting answers to the questions that arise from your self-paced class. You might want to have a book on hand, just in case, or hope that QuickBooks’ Help actually is a help. Having a patient human acquaintance who knows the software could also be helpful, although probably not at three o’clock in the morning. It certainly can be done, and many people have learned everything from how to trim their dog’s nails to how to sing opera from self-paced tutorials.
To succeed in an on-demand class, you’re also going to need tenacity. Because there’s no real-time teacher to make sure you’re paying attention and keeping up with the rest of the class, you can easily subside into a sort of passive complacency and just let the instructor’s words roll over you. Yet you’re the one who’s got to be responsible for seeing that you complete the assignments, understand the material, and, ultimately, finish the course. While these things are within the ability of a disciplined adult, you can also very quickly lose interest and momentum, and the next thing you know, you’ll have forgotten about QuickBooks entirely.
A further danger encountered in self-paced classes that isn’t a problem when working with a live teacher is the expiration date of the course you’re considering. While the software you mean to study is perpetually evolving, a video tutorial is endlessly the same. You can undoubtedly find up-to-date asynchronous classes; you just have to be careful. Out-of-date courses don’t necessarily disappear once they’ve passed their “best by” dates, although titles like “Learn QuickBooks 2015” should be a tip-off to the fact that you should seek enlightenment elsewhere.
There is another factor, and this one definitely works in favor of the on-demand course: money. Although there are exceptions, the general rule is that on-demand classes, which require only a single appearance from the teacher, are less costly than classes that involve a live teacher who has to perform regularly for a regular series of new students each time a new class begins. If you’re watching your pennies (and most people with fledgling businesses are), you may find that an on-demand course makes for a more financially viable means of learning QuickBooks.
Watch Free QuickBooks Tutorials
If your finances are truly strained, you may want to consider the most wallet-friendly option of all: watching free tutorials. YouTube is chockablock with free videos designed to teach you QuickBooks. These range from one video that claims to do it in 12 minutes and others that run for considerably longer, many of them claiming to be “full” or “complete” courses. There’s even a “How to Convert QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online in Less Than 3 Minutes!”—exclamation point theirs. There are so many options, in fact, that you’re likely to get dizzy scrolling through them all.
Such an embarrassment of free things brings with it a number of flies in the ointment, not the least of which is the fact that, once you stick something up on YouTube, it can stay there forever, collecting dust in a Google mobile data center in some place like Hamina, Finland. Although some creators are conscientious enough to take down their out-of-date videos when replacing them with newer content, and although that switch from desktop to online in 3 minutes video wasn’t a day old at the time of this writing, even a cursory look at the options on YouTube shows a hotchpotch of dates and versions of QuickBooks, dating back as far as QuickBooks 2014 and probably beyond. That’s not to say that there aren’t up-to-date videos on YouTube, but definitely check the dates and make sure that you’re getting something current before you sit down for your first lesson.
The other pitfall of a free online QuickBooks tutorial lies in its price. Not that there’s anything wrong with free: free is very nice indeed, but, as a species, we tend to value something that costs money more than we value things that didn’t cost anything. If you’ve made no investment—if you have nothing to lose by not finishing the class—you’re not especially likely to see it through to the end. That tenacity you need to complete any online class is likely to be in even shorter supply when you have no stake in the game.
If you’re determined to learn QuickBooks and you’re basically broke, you may have no choice but to make do with a free tutorial. And, despite all the above caveats, some of them are more than adequate ways of learning to use the software. That said, perhaps the most practical use that can be made of free tutorials is as a means of getting a foretaste of QuickBooks before you commit to a paid class (or a free trial or a subscription to the software). You’ll get an idea of what QuickBooks looks like and how it’s used, and, therefore, won’t be acquiring a pig in a poke when you do start making financial commitments to Intuit and one class provider or other.
Explore QuickBooks Certificates & Certification
What happens after you’ve taken a QuickBooks class? How do you prove to potential employers that you have indeed mastered the software?
This is where certificates and certifications come in, although, from the outset, you should know that they are not the same thing. A certificate is basically a diploma from the course you took: it says that you showed up. It may also mean that you did the homework or passed a final exam, but even that isn’t necessarily the case. Still, a certificate always looks nice on a digital resume or LinkedIn profile. Some providers even award digital badges that have been verified by third-party entities; these may carry more weight with prospective employers than certificates of completion.
Certification is another matter altogether: it testifies to some objective and verifiable achievement. In the case of QuickBooks, that generally means passing an exam designed by Intuit and administered by Certiport, complete with time limit, proctor (virtual or in-room), and passing grades. Certification is optional (and not free), but it is the best way to demonstrate that you’ve acquired some mastery over QuickBooks and will know what you’re doing if you get hired.
Intuit offers three levels of certification for QuickBooks: one is for beginners who’ve mastered the basics (QuickBooks Certified User), one is for those who wish to demonstrate their all-around bookkeeping knowledge (Certified Bookkeeping Professional), and the third is for advanced and experienced users who want to add further credence to their professional abilities (QuickBooks ProAdvisor). The Certified User title isn’t all that hard to come by: you can learn what you need to know to pass the desktop version exam in four days, while half that amount of time should suffice for QuickBooks Online. After taking the class, you’ll be referred to Certiport for all the relevant details, practice exams, the exam itself, and, yes, the fee of $249, which includes a retake, practice exams, and other ephemera. You can also purchase just the exam voucher (with the retake option) for $125. These fees do not include Certiport’s $35 proctoring fee.
The Certified Bookkeeping Professional exam is more exacting in its requirements: it calls for 150 hours of instruction in general accounting and bookkeeping principles. The procedures and fees for taking the text through Certiport are the same as for the QuickBooks Certified User exams.
As for the advanced QuickBooks ProAdvisor certification, the exam is administered by Intuit itself and is of the open-book variety. The QuickBooks Online ProAdvisor certification unlocks a number of tools to help develop an accounting or bookkeeping practice, as well as the option to obtain ProAdvisor certification in payroll and the desktop version of the software. There are definitely benefits to becoming a Certified ProAdvisor when the time comes, and the QuickBooks Online certification is even free. QuickBooks Desktop ProAdvisor is, on the other hand, a decidedly costly proposition to maintain at $799 a year.
Intuit may have created QuickBooks, but they’re not the be-all and end-all of QuickBooks certification. The National Association of Certified Public Bookkeepers (NACPB) has its own certification program for QuickBooks Online. The bundle of preparation materials and the exam itself is more expensive than the Intuit equivalent: $369 for NACPB members and $449 for non-members. Note that the annual membership fee is $200, so it very much doesn’t pay for itself if you go in for the bundle. Note as well that the NACPB doesn’t offer certification in the desktop version of QuickBooks.
The NACPB also offers a bookkeeping certification, which requires at least two years’ professional experience (and, preferably, at least an Associate’s Degree in Accounting). The certification entitles you to put the letters CPB (certified public bookkeeper) after your name on your business cards, stationery, and (should you choose to order them) refrigerator magnets.
The NACPB has a rival organization, the American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers (AIPB), which confers the letters CB (Certified Bookkeepers) and is better suited to those who do not have an educational background in accounting. While these aren’t QuickBooks certifications per se, they do attest to both knowledge and experience in the field. If you are after a career as a bookkeeper, when the time is right, you should most likely pursue one of these two certifications. Clients are going to trust you with their money; you should do whatever you can to make yourself appear reliable.
A certification certainly can’t hurt your chances of employment. Some QuickBooks classes even include exam vouchers, so you’d have nothing to lose by standing for the test. Otherwise, there is some expense involved, but proof of your abilities can help separate you from the crowd and give the impression that you actually will know what you’re doing when you sit down at your machine, open QuickBooks, and begin your bookkeeping career.