Bookkeeping

pollyanna24

I just wondered if anyone could advise regarding bookkeeping. I started looking into it and think it would be a good opportunity for me as I've always been interested in figures. At present, I am working as a legal secretary, but am getting frustrated with the long commute into London every day and know that after a while I may be able to be a self-employed bookeeper and work from home (esp handy in a few years when I may have children).

I'm not looking for a quick fix or an easy way of making money, just an honest career. So far I've looked on the net and found courses from the Institute of Bookkeepers and just wondered if anyone knew the difference between the different Level IIs and diplomas and also how much I might be looking at in order to complete each course. I would probably study from home as I still have to keep my full time job. I also wouldn't mind hearing from other bookkeepers who might be able to tell me how much they enjoy their work!


Level I Certificate in Basic Bookkeeping
Level II Certificate in Manual Bookkeeping
Level II Certificate in Computerised Bookkeeping
Level III Diploma in Manual Bookkeeping
Level III Diploma in Payroll Management

Conor_3

Can't help you much but just to let you know that it's worth doing. My wifes bosses step-daughter does this. It pays sufficiently to cover the cost of a hire car to the Lake District with overnight accommodation and give her enough money to only need to work 3 days a week when she goes over there for a couple of days to do clients books.

From what I have gleaned, the manual covers such wonderful things as ledger keeping and double entry whereas computerised does what it says on the tin and probably covers the popular software such as Sage Line 50.

I'd say payroll is worth a look at as well as there are plenty of small companies, run by bearded blokes called Ken, with a handful of staff who can't be bothered with all this wages malarkey and would rather just pay someone to take it off their hands.

As mentioned before, Sage Line 50 seems to be the software of choice at the moment.

honeypop

The computerised bookkeeping course would enable you to use the more up-to-date ways of doing it, but you will still need to know the manual way in order for it all to make sense (eg: its no good knowing how to use Microsoft Word if you can't type, spell or construct sentences properly IYSWIM), so I would think you need to learn at least the basics of bookkeeping before learning how to do it on a computer as well.

I am a book keeper and when I learnt Sage Line 50 it helped massively that I knew what was going on in the first place with all the terminology and procedures etc.

I am about to enrol on an IAB course at the college in the evenings in September, as I too want to do a couple of days bookeeping work in addition to my current job and it is better to be a member of such an association, although I have done bookeeping based work for 6 years or so now and qualified 7 or 8 years ago, I am doing the course to refresh on things I may have got rusty on and to get the qualification to enable me to join the IAB.

I would say though that my experience doing the books for a number of companies in that time will help a lot for future clients as I have seen a wide range of styles used and seen a lot of situations (money wise) that I can now deal with, where if I just did my training and went straight into it, I wouldn't have the experience of so many different things and perhaps might not know how to deal with certain things that may crop up in the books. I know for sure if I wanted to source out my bookkeeping, I would want someone experienced to handle any situation occuring, rather than someone who has just completed some standard training. So perhaps try and get some experience somewhere while you are training if possible.

I love doing this job and being able to advise companies on their position and helping them grow financially, therefore it is also good to be able to do more than just produce their financial statements, you need to know how to interpret them and relate them to the business and advise from there.

To ensure you could cope with any company's books you would need at least the level 3 certificate/diploma from what I can gather after looking into the courses myself, and you need level 2 first before you can do this. You would also be better off getting a higher level than that also, to ensure you have a thorough knowledge of accounts. So remember to factor in the costs of all the courses you need to have done, plus you need to pay for a 'certificate of compliance' to be able to practice, plus the cost of membership to an association like the IAB, ideally all before you embark on this career.

Also, to do several companies books from home you would need somehting like Sage software for multiple companies which starts at £495 for 1 company and is an extra £150 for each company you want to add, so you can do the books on the computer for more than one company. Plus perhaps room for filing all the paperwork if needed to (this can really mount up, so I'm not talking 1 filing cabinet).

Hope this helps, I know about it as I'm just doing the same thing so just wanted to give you an idea of the costs you are looking at.

mikewebs

Hi there

Why don't you think about the Association of Accounting Technicians courses? There are 3 levels NVQ2,3 & 4 and the AAT Technician qualification (Level 4) is industry recognised and, more importantly, gives you a great grounding in not only how to do books, but also what you do with the figures - i.e. not just financial accounting but also management accounting. You also get to appreciate exactly what SAGE Line 50 is doing 'behind the scenes' and why things like control accounts are so important - I don't know if the courses you have looked at give you these other skills.

Have a look at www.aat.org.uk for information and check out your local college to see if they offer the course - some do offer full-time (16 hours) free (True moneysaving) and you could still work as well (maybe even be cheeky and ask your curent employers to pay for it as it would give you greater flexibility in your office!) Other organisations that offer the AAT courses on a part time basis are FTC-Kaplan ( www.ftckaplan.com ) and BPP ( www.bpp.com ) these will give you a good idea of what the courses entail. In theory, you could be a chartered accountant in 5 years (if you work your socks off).

Hope this information helps you to deiced what to do.

honeypop

Forgot to say, if you want to study at home, it costs £369 through ICS (plus 10% cashback through Quidco) for each of the Level 2 certificate in book-keeping, the level 3 certificate, and then the diploma in advanced book-keeping (or at the moment you can get them online for £295 each).