I wanna do ACCA or Cima but due to I had completely different education and no knowledge about the accountancy i ve decided to start bookkeeping.I am planning to do city and guild bookkeeping and sage computerised accounts.is it good idea to do and those courses would that help me find a job as a bookkeper,if those courses not good can anyone recommend me any other courses for starting?
before spending a lot of money on a course, best first approach is to buy a book on the subject and work through it doing all of the questions along the way.
Old AAT study texts would be a good place to start and can be picked up quite cheaply. Ignore whether a book says whether it is ICB, IAB, AAT, etc. Bookkeeping is bookkeeping and they all say the same thing in slightly different ways).
check out these ISBN's for starters - 0751710946 & 0751710938.
Those two will take you through the basics up to initial trial balance and prepare you to take a course or if you prefer to study from books and just take the exams of the body that you sign up with.
Take a look at the websites of the ICB and IAB and see which one you like the look of.
Good luck in your studies.
kind regards,
Shaun.
p.s.. please don't take this as an insult as it is not intended as such but in this business you need to get away from writing in slang and abreviations which do not convey a very professional image.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
crossed in the post but I was thinking old AAT texts for the foundation units 1 to 3 for starters as well.
Normally I would advise the Cox book but something about this post suggests that they would be better starting off with AAT texts and then investing in the Cox book (or Woods Robinson book) later when they know that this path is for them.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
I was thinking about to do aat but the things is it is a qualification takes long time to do and i have friends who has completed aat she said dont waste your time with aat start to do bookkeeping will be quicker.
My reason for suggesting AAT was that you suggested you were looking for employment rather than self employment. Most employers are after AAT, whereas if you want to be self employed then IAB or ICB may be the better route.
As Shaun says though, might be worth having a good look before deciding.
I would prefer to be self emplyed.But i think ICB or IAB studies mostly is home studies which is I dont want to do.I prefer to do classrooom studies.I really wanna know what is the main difference between city and guild and icb or iab?
ICB and IAB are professional bodies, rather than examination bodies which is what I understand C&G to be. This means when you complete your training with ICB or IAB you become a member and have access to a huge range of benefits, especially helpful if you go the self employed route.
I don't know if either offer classroom based training, but I do know that they both offer exemptions for other training. I am partway through an evening class in HNC Accounting and have just received some exemptions from ICB. I have found the class based training a bit better than the original distance learning I did when joining ICB, mainly due to the fact that you can have really good discussion during class based sessions that distance learning doesn't lend itself to. Having said that, I find the pace of the classroom based learning pretty slow as you only really go as quickly as the slowest person.
There are a lot of colleges offering IAB courses, especially as now the IAB courses are accepted for the UK government apprenticeship scheme for employers who want their staff to bookkeeping, so the IAB is not just for the self-employed.
This is because the IAB is also an examination body (as well as a professinal body) - it has been for many years.
http://www.iab.org.uk/qual_intro.asp
-- Edited by YLB-HO on Monday 15th of August 2011 06:01:31 PM
