I think that it's safe to say that all of us invest in training materials (glances behind him to seven large size billy bookcases bulging with accountancy texts) but there is also a lot of good quality free stuff to be had out there on the net.
I'm sure that others will come on board with other helpful links but to get the ball rolling try out these :
For everything that you ever wanted to know about IFRS for SME's but never thought to ask, a training course from those jolly nice people at the IASB :
Both of the above sites require free signups (For OT you have to sign up to download the lecture notes) but there are no credit cards or fee's of any kind.
Whilst the above are predominantly aimed at accounting students, bookkeeping students really need to have a firm grasp of accountancy to suceed as well and there is something in the above links for everyone.
Happy Friday,
kind regards,
Shaun.
P.S.1 if anyone else knows of good quality, safe, totally free stuff please add links for the benefit of the BKN community below
p.S.2 note that the ACCA paper links above are to the ACCA site, not open tuition. The ACCA site has even more free resources including old exam papers with answers.
P.S.3 edited only to emphasise that the ACCA links were not to Opentuition.
-- Edited by Shamus on Friday 3rd of August 2012 01:36:26 PM
__________________
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.
No, it will be a cold day in Hell before I am considered Sage Freindly.
When I was first buying software for my practice I didn't want to buy Sage largely due to their licencing but wasn't convinced that I could run a practice without it.... Still so far so good in the real world!
The link though gave good and fair arguements both for and against using Sage, and QB, and VT and even went on to Payroll software so grew into a good referal point when people are just starting their practice.
Maybe I should change my strap line to "Making the world a better place, one ex Sage user at a time"
talk later,
Shaun.
p.s. I now know how to make posts stickies. This one hasn't earned it's stripes yet but if it gathers enough useful info to it I can make it one.
-- Edited by Shamus on Friday 3rd of August 2012 04:18:00 PM
__________________
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'll have words with Steve about this one and also convince me that I don't need Sage but at the moment not sure
kind regards,
Shaun.
__________________
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.
Sorry, posted the wrong bookmark from chrome, i had a really good link for basic to intermediate Excel i used for the AAT exam (seem to have deleted it)
I'll leave the Excel stuff for the hints and tips section of this site.
Neil.
-- Edited by Spamkebab on Sunday 5th of August 2012 01:15:52 PM
It would be a useful sticky Shaun, especially for those studying AAT as a stepping stone to becoming a student member of one of the chartered governing bodies.
I have given this info (gratefully received from your good self) out on the Kaplan interact site for the other AAT student members. We have a nice little group going
over at Kaplan interact with a handful of regulars, all at different stages of AAT. I must say though, the Kaplan AAT level 4 study texts do link in quite well with some of
the higher ACCA papers and these tuition videos are a great way of gathering info to help pass AAT exams and prepare oneself for further education.
that ties in nicely with my thoughts that at the higher levels the AAT texts are simply cut down ACCA one's (In that respect I think that both BPP and Kaplan can be considered Green publishers!).
Anyway, consider this thread promoted to a sticky.
Still hoping for some more useful pointers to other free (and safe) resources out there on the interweb to make this a more useful one stop thread for people to find the best and cheapest resources for what they need to support their studies.
Will keep posting to this one each time that I come accross anything else that I think is useful.
kind regards,
Shaun.
__________________
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.
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.
F means Fundamentals and P means Professional Level.
The papers actually break down more than that :
F1 to F3 are fundamentals level.... Although a fundamentals level that you would need AAT level IV to get exemption from so not that fundamental.
F4 to F9 are the skills papers.... This is as compex as I ever thought that accountancy study would get. When people ask for PQ's they basically mean that you should have passed at least F1 to F9. Study at this level is the equivalent of a BSc.
P1 to P3 are the core professional papers.... Basically masters level study
P4 to P7 are the options where you pick two from four... The time pressure on these in the exam makes them near impossible to get through. Last sitting had only 29% of people getting through paper P5 which is no reflection on student knowledge.
You cannot be a UK auditor unless you have sat the UK variants of papers P2 (compulsary paper) and P7 (option paper).
HTH,
Shaun.
__________________
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.
That link is for City & Guilds past papers for manual bookkeeping up to and including level 3 complete with answers. I know that there are some zip files for
Sage line 50 on there too complete with past papers and answers for computerised accounts up to level 3.
right, just popping off to Harvest those before they do an AAT and stick them in the members only area
__________________
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.
Shamus you are wonderful! This open tuition is excellent! (what I have looked at so far) How and why do they provide this for free? When people pay £1000's for study books etc.
Found an absolutely fantastic resource for IFRS that gives a very high quality (mostly) one page summary (embedded in four page documents) of every current standard
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 looking to brush up on EXCEL and first came to this thread then searched the site. I soon realised there's an almost infinite stream of resources out there. Anyway, for convenience :-
there are still an awful lot of people out there using Excel 2003 so what's outdated to one is still current to many.
The mess up that Microsoft made was not making 2007 backwards compatible for old macro's and there are a lot of macro's running out there that would be incredibly expensive to replace.
Personally it was only last year that I was finally able to get rid of supporting some macro's written in Excel IV! (to my mind a particularly good vintage).
all the best,
Shaun.
__________________
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.
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.
p.s. amended because just found that the editor stops the link being a link when it hits the first percentage sign unless you use the insert link option of the advanced editor. The link should work now.
-- Edited by Shamus on Wednesday 21st of August 2013 02:38:47 PM
__________________
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.
Mention of Excel training in another thread reminded me of some Youtube videos that cobver the full spectrum from beginner to advanced.
I found them because I was stuck with a formula and whilst there were lots of answers to my problem out there, this guy was the only one who got it right.
I will say now that I thought that I was an Excel expert until I watched some of these and suddenly realised that I'm really not.
They are very watchable unlike many of the dry, boring one's out there... On the downside this guys made 2145 Excel video's but everything is very easy to find.
p.s. does anyone have any recomendations for a free quickbooks Youtube channel as whilst there seem plenty of QB vids out there I've not found anything like this Excel channel.
__________________
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.
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.
Hi
You can get a Sage for dummies book, but the course rate that Shaun gave you on your other posting sounds like a corking deal! Better than reading the stuff book methinks!
__________________
Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
Hi, I'm going through this website to get background knowledge in bookkeeping before my course starts, its free and it seems of good quality but the only thing is its not UK based info; www.accountingcoach.com
Hi Louisa
So hows about an intro before we start. We always ask newbies!
Usual stuff - I presume you do not yet belong to a prof body given you are looking to train, but can you advise us what course you are doing, who training with, where based, what you do for a job now, what it is you want to be once you have completed your current training -
bookkeeper or accountant, plans after this set of training (if any yet!). That so of thing. Helps get to know you but also how best to pitch answers.
I would urge caution using sites that are non UK based, its not a great site, but does have a few useful bits. Try Open Tuition and Accowtancy as ta least then you are getting UK based regulations, termonology etc.
__________________
Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
Ah I'm sorry, I did go over to the introduce yourself section right after writing that, as I realised that may be the case.
No not as yet but I will be, doing the AAT level 2 certificate in bookkeeping and will be joining the AAT. It's with http://www.ncgdirect.co.uk/Pages/Courses/Course-Details.aspx?course_id=7147 After this course I would love to be a bookkeeper and take the advanced certificate. I would like to keep my options open to maybe further my career in accounting, as my son will leave college in 2 years and wants to join us.
I'm based in Essex and completed 2 very basic courses in basic bookkeeping and Sage line 50 many moons ago with Pitmans. I have an NVQ level 2 in Business Administration so my career was based as a secretary/PA during the apprenticeship. Then my career changed and I went into retail management. Then children came and I have been self-employed since, 16 years running my own businesses with my partner in various industries, the last one being a web agency.
Thank you for the heads up on that website, didn't realise it wasn't so good regarding UK law etc, a very helpful and important issue noted thank you!
Thank you, yes I've just tried it out. I also don't like videos, but you can turn the sound off just to read the screen as it seems he is just reading out the slide.
I was thinking that the other day I was gonna ask if anyone had heard from him and if so how was he getting on, its a shame he is not on here anymore because he was one of the regular contributors when I first joined and he as well as the other regulars are the main reasons why I did.
__________________
Doug
These are only my opinions of how I see things and therefore should not be taken as advice
I'll have you know we are all extraordinary on here.
I smell veis in the air.
lol.
you were right on the veis - Mr Mod has removed that part as I emailed him offline. We are waiting to see if he comes back on re his other shall I do the ICB/AAT post - given he is in Germany, we need to know if they are recognised bodies by the rest of the Accountancy profession!
__________________
Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position