Noble sentiment I hope, but our business is growing well (import/export in cosmetics) and having "reasonably succesfully" done basic book-keeping (with our accountants and your help), I'd like to try and get our eldest daughter in to take over for us and to learn correct book-keeping practices so she can grow and offer to the wealth of local small traders here in our area.
Question therefore is simply which route/courses (preferably home study type) would you guys/ladies recommend?
The young lady in question is good with maths (A at GCSE and passes AS, before dropping pure maths at A-Level), so numeracy no issue, it is just a question of whether to suggest pure book-keeping or something with basics of accounting too?
PS: At that point I am lost as I really don't know what each qualification/course covers.
Any advice would be great, as I then only have to convince her this a good way into workplace!
She would be at a great age to get an apprenticeship (AAT / ACCA).
Have you thought about approaching your own accountants to see whether they would be interested in taking her on? There's always more incentive for an accountants when it comes on the back of a request from a good client and even if they cannot help out they may know someone who can.
The above said, is this what your daughter wants or what you want for her?
If she has good acccademic qualifications from school and as your business is doing well what about university?
And on that matter, if she was sat down with a university prospectus what would she choose to learn? Would it be finance?
She's young and probably wthout any real direction at the moment.
I have several children myself and whilst all are very accademic only one of them has gone down the financial services route despite my best attempts to guide them all down that route. (One of the others is studying Dance and Performing arts(#1). And the youngest is working towards eventually studying Games Design and development... So all those hours spent on bad company 2 are study! (yer right)).
I do feel that even if our daughter goes into accountancy she needs to pick up the trade in a non family environment first so an apprenticeship whilst picking up AAT would be great.
kind regards,
Shaun.
#1 for that one she was very successful in that field before I agreed to the course as I'm a little old fashioned and don't regard such things as legitimate career choices. Feeling instead that people should have a "real" career to fall back on.
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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.
Although everything Shaun as said is sound, she could consider doing a IAB apprenticeship which will give her a good grounding in book-keeping which to be frank may be lacking in the AAT/ACCA courses, which have a more accountancy bias. She can use the IAB qualifications for exemptions to go on later to do the AAT or ACCA if she wants to too.
AAT has withdrawn from providing apprenticeships for payroll, so anyone now wanting to do payroll as part as the apprenticeship scheme will have to do the IAB payroll course.
I now have a "trainee accountant" working with me. She got a First in Maths at University, so she could quite easily go to work for a large firm of accountants, but this did not suit her. Instead she is doing all the IAB manual book-keeping qualifications from Level 1 upwards, to get a really good grounding in the basics. She finds it really interesting and says it has helped to understand quickly when we discuss why certain transactions are recorded in a particular way over other transactions.
I have to agree also with Shaun, that she should go into a non famiy environment first - I had my nephew work with me for a week, it was a disaster, and did not like it when I complained about his poor time keeping, lack of communications and poor work practices (!)..... It was months before he would speak to me again.
-- Edited by YLB-HO on Sunday 18th of November 2012 11:16:00 AM
