I have recently completed Level 1 ICB examination following study of Kaplans practical bookkeeping. I expect to pass this without trouble as I have many years previous small business experience throughout which I always "did my own books"
I would now like to move on to Level 2 computerised accounts, before starting my own bookkeeping service. but would appreciate some advice from those who have taken this route as the best ( and most cost effective) way to proceed.
I have done computerised books in the past but the programme I used was an old MSDOS one which was devised by a local software house. I started using this before windows was even thought of and because it did all I needed I stuck with it for years. I have recently downloaded Microsoft accounting prof 2008 (Does anyone else find it painfully slow or is it perhaps my ancient (2002) computer. it can take 2-3 minutes literally! for a screen to refresh). This is quite a different animal and although I am feeling my way around it I would no way be confident at the moment to take on clients without a lot of further training.
I have looked at Training providers. DLP seem good at £255 inc Sage software but I would need to upgrade this to run clients accounts wouln'nt I?
Alternatively I could go for the bookcert package but I cannot determine if the training would be sufficient to allow me to feel confident about knowing how different software packages work.
A third alternative could be to learn a specific package (say sage) from a text book. Has anyone gone this way and if so what books/packages do you recommend.
Any advice from those who have been there would be gratefully received
I completed a computerised bookkeeping course through TDLC and part of the cost covered provision of Sage Instant Accounts.
I never used Sage before this and would say after the course am feeling quite confident in its use.
The only issue with Instant Accounts is it has a one company license - you can get around this however it is breaking Sage terms of use. By the way my tutor told me how to do this!!!!
I downloaded MS Accounting aswell and find it runs well on my PC - just over a year old and of course it lets you operate more than one company plus it is free so this can get around the expense of buying a more expensive Sage package.
My preferred option at the moment is MS Accounting for the simple reason it is free and i found that by completing the course on Instant Accounts i was able to transfer my knowledge to the MS package farly easily.
