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
• Cash vs. Accrual Accounting
• Asset accounts
• Income accounts
• Liability accounts
• Expense accounts
• Payroll accounts
• Tax forms
• More...

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.