| Become
an Accountant!
Everything you need to know about becoming
an accountant.
Almost every small business is going to need
an accountant at some time whether it be full time, or at tax time or maybe
just quarterly. Becoming an accountant can be a fun and rewarding
career.
What are the essentials?
Well first you need to have a desire
and aptitude to work with numbers. You will need some education
in accounting principles.
Below is a couple places to help you polish
up on your accounting skills:
Accounting
Concepts Tutorial - This is a brief, text-based tutorial including
quizzes on accounting principles, including the accounting equation, debits
and credits and more with financials.
"The Bookkeeping Language" from BeanCounterAccounting
introduces you to some of the terminology and definitions used in the accounting
and bookkeeping language.
That's two good places to get you started
on accounting basics. You will need to have a knowledge of payroll
basics as well which you can get at Payroll.com Intuit's
site for payroll here.
The SBA's web site has tutorials including
accounting for a small business, covering such topics as keeping good records,
financial statements, cash vs. accrual accounting, balance sheet accounts,
basic types of business records, basics of budgeting, estimating profits
and much more. You can reach that section of the SBA
tutorials here.
So essentially you will need to be knowledgable
in the following:
-
Income statements also known as profit and
loss statements
-
Balance sheets
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Cash vs. Accrual Accounting
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Asset accounts
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Income accounts
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Liability accounts
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Expense accounts
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Payroll accounts
-
Tax forms
-
More...
Most small businesses will want to use the
accrual method of accounting. Even if they aren't required to do so for
tax purposes, they have a better idea of where they stand month to month
if you record their expenses as they are incurred.
The basic building block to good books
is data entered in the right place. Be sure maintain a chart of accounts
for your customers and to help keep you organized and to help you understand
the different types of accounts and their relationships.
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in Business
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