Bookkeeping for Personal and Business Accounting
Free:
Get practical financial skills to help you balance the books
Discover how money flows in personal and business environments and develop the basic skills to manage your finances with this course introducing you to bookkeeping and accounting.
You’ll master common terms, basic maths and gain the ability to put your knowledge into practice. After this course you’ll be able to perfectly balance your books and understand how concepts of profit and loss lead to revenue or debt.
Develop ideas through conversation
This course is not facilitated. Learners are encouraged to support one another, share personal experience and knowledge, and see new perspectives.
What topics will you cover?
Week 1 - financial accounting and reporting
- The reasons and objectives of management and financial accounting, including stewardship, control and accountability
- Key terminology including income and expenses, assets and liabilities, profit and loss statements and the balance sheet
Week 2 - essential numerical skills
- Intermediate numerical skills including BODMAS, ratios, percentages, fractions and negative numbers
- The test of reasonableness and the table of equivalencies
- Manipulating equations and formulas
Week 3 - double-entry and the balance sheet
- Business entity and the dual aspect concepts
- The relationship between the accounting equation and double-entry bookkeeping
- Recording transactions in the appropriate ledger accounts using the double-entry bookkeeping system
- Simple balance sheets in a vertical format
- Balancing off accounts at the end of an accounting period
- Preparing a trial balance
- T accounts, debits and credits
- Double-entry and the profit and loss account
- The effect of profit on the accounting equation
Week 4 - accounting
- Income and expense accounts
- Accounting for closing stock
- The account equation and double-entry rules
- Trial balance nominal ledger accounts
When would you like to start?
What will you achieve?
By the end of the course, you'll be able to...
Who is the course for?
This course is for anyone wanting an introduction to bookkeeping and financial accounting. It might be of particular interest to small business owners, people who are self employed or those wanting to better manage their own finance. You don’t need any previous experience.
What software or tools do you need?
You can largely work from pen and paper in your notebook, and for more complex tasks use a standard calculator, or if you have a smartphone, the calculator app there. In the second half of the course there is a pre-made spreadsheet template for you to download and work through the exercises in Microsoft’s Excel, or free online software like Google Spreadsheets.
Who will you learn with?
Devendra Kodwani
I am Senior Lecturer in Finance at the Open University Business School. I teach and research in accounting, finance and corporate governance.
Who developed the course?
The Open University (OU) is the largest academic institution in the UK and a world leader in flexible distance learning, with a mission is to be open to people, places, methods and ideas.
Free:
Unlimited access
Upgrading will mean you get unlimited access to the course.
If you’re taking a course for free you have access to the course for its duration + 14 days, regardless of when you join. If you upgrade the course you have access for as long as the course exists on FutureLearn.
Access to tests
When you upgrade you’ll have access to any tests during the course.
To receive a Certificate of Achievement you need to take any tests and score over 70%. You don’t get access to tests if you choose to take a course for free.
Certificate of Achievement
Upgrading means you’ll receive a Certificate of Achievement when you complete the course.
To receive a Certificate of Achievement you need to mark 90% of the steps on the course as complete, and score over 70% on any course tests.
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