The right online bookkeeping course can teach you valuable, hands-on bookkeeping skills plus how to launch a freelance bookkeeping business. There are also courses designed for bookkeepers who want to brush up on their accounting skills or grow their business.
But with so many bookkeeping courses, which one is right for you?
We’ve reviewed the best online bookkeeping courses of 2023 to help you find the right one for you. We looked for courses that:
Allow you to learn at your own pace
Teach you how to use the most common bookkeeping software
Teach in-depth bookkeeping skills so you’re prepared for your clients.
1. Brilliant Bookkeeper
Brilliant Bookkeeper teaches students essential bookkeeping skills, how to find clients who are looking for bookkeeping services, and how to run a successful remote bookkeeping business. It’s a video-based course that includes lifetime access to course materials so you can review key concepts whenever you need to. Students also receive access to a coaching community to help them along the way.
This course teaches students how to set up and manage the books using QuickBooks and Xero through video tutorials. Additional course content includes:
Bookkeeping terminology cheat sheet
Business entity types comparison
Debits and credits cheat sheet
Monthly bookkeeping workflow
Month-end and year-end close
Client onboarding
Magic Tech Stack to help set you up with the proper bookkeeping software
Brilliant Bookkeeper is designed with beginners in mind, but trained bookkeepers accountants can also get a lot out of the course's strong focus on client acquisition and business set-up.
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Jumpstart your bookkeeping business
Brilliant Bookkeeper teaches you the skills you need to become a bookkeeping expert and launch a successful bookkeeping business.
2. Skillshare
The way Skillshare works is that you purchase a membership and then gain access to their entire catalog of courses. And Skillshare has several online bookkeeping courses to choose from, everything from beginner-level courses if you want to manage books for your own business to advanced-level courses designed for working bookkeepers.
To give you an idea of what’s offered, here are some examples of the online bookkeeping courses you’ll find on Skillshare:
- Accounting Principles: Learn The Basics of Accounting and Bookkeeping
- Bookkeeping for Freelancers: How to Handle Your Finances
- Excel Bootcamp: Master Data and Formulas
Each course includes a final, hands-on class project that’s meant for you to display what you learned in the course, and when you’re browsing Skillshare courses, you’ll see the final projects. You can also view the skills level, number of lessons, length of each lesson and total course length, about the course creator, and course reviews.
You have access to the course content for as long as you’re a Skillshare member, and you can move through the lessons at your own pace.
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3. Accounting Coach
Accounting Coach is a free site that teaches the basic principles of bookkeeping and accounting. There are 30+ modules that are broken down into smaller parts, covering everything from depreciation, accounts payable, evaluating business investments, accounting careers, and more.
The course content all lives on the Accounting Coach website, and you must read through all of it — no video lessons. There are quizzes, cheatsheets, and crossword puzzles to help you retain what you’re learning. And the site tracks your progress through each lesson so you can see how close you are to completion.
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4. LinkedIn Learning
LinkedIn Learning has a couple of different ways to take online bookkeeping courses, depending on where you’re at in your learning journey. For beginners, you can start with one of LinkedIn’s Learning Paths that includes six courses and 11 hours of content, including:
- Accounting Foundations: Bookkeeping
- Finance Essentials for Small Business
- Running a Profitable Business: Understanding Cash Flow
- Taxes for Small Business
- QuickBooks Online Essential Training
- Excel for Accounting
Or you can take any of those courses individually if you’re looking for specific bookkeeping training.
For LinkedIn members, these courses are free — you can sign up for a one-month free trial — but you can also purchase them as a non-member. Individual courses range from $24.99 to $44.99+, and the membership starts at $19.99. And if you are active on LinkedIn, you receive a badge of completion once you’ve completed the Bookkeeping Learning Pathway.
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5. Udemy
Udemy is another well-known online course platform and currently lists hundreds of courses with the “bookkeeping” tag. One of Udemy’s highest-rated online bookkeeping courses is the Accounting & Bookkeeping Masterclass - Beginner to Advanced. It covers rules for recording transactions, inventory valuation, accounting concepts, depreciation methods, bank reconciliation, and more. It’s a total of 14.5 hours of video content, assignments, 18 downloadable resources, and a certificate of completion.
Before you purchase any courses on Udemy, you can browse through the course outline, preview some lessons, and see the length of each lesson. Udemy courses are often sold at a steep discount if you look out for sales.
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6. Harvard Business School Online
Through Harvard Business School, you can take a number of self-paced courses designed to expand your business skills. HBU’s Financial Accounting course is an 8-week session that, while self-paced, sets regular deadlines so you complete the course. This program includes seven modules with 6-8 hours of work per week and explains the following key concepts:
- How balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow states are developed and used
- How to evaluate the financial health of a company
- What GAAP and IFRS standards are
- How to prepare financial forecasts used in strategic planning
- How to value potential investments, projects, and ventures
All of HBU’s courses include a certificate of completion and specialization, and you can browse through the syllabus and preview lessons before you sign up for the course.
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7. Penn Foster
Penn Foster offers online, self-paced programs to earn a certificate, diploma, or degree in a variety of in-demand fields. And the Penn Foster Bookkeeping Training Program is a career diploma program that teaches the basics of accounting, how to create financial reports using QuickBooks Online, how to use Microsoft Excel, and proper bookkeeping procedures to keep your clients compliant.
Penn Foster estimates that its bookkeeping program can be completed in as little as six months, but the average student takes 11 months to complete it by dedicating a few hours each week to the course.
Penn Foster offers three payment options for their online bookkeeping course, starting at $799 for a one-time payment and up to $989 when split over several months.
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8. Coursera Intuit Bookkeeping Academy
Taught by the Intuity Academy Team, leaders in bookkeeping and accounting software, this is a bookkeeping certificate program that includes four online bookkeeping courses in one, with nearly 60 hours of course content. The courses included are:
- Bookkeeping Basics
- Assets in Accounting
- Liabilities and Equity in Accounting
- Financial Statement Analysis
Students also receive career resources, including a resume review and interview prep. You can start the course with a 7-day free trial to Coursera, but then it's a $39/month subscription until you complete the course. You can access course materials as long as you are paying for a subscription.
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9. Introduction to Bookkeeping (ACCA-X)
The ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) has teamed up with edX to create a free Introduction to Bookkeeping course. It’s a 6-week self-paced course that includes about five to eight hours of work each week. The course focuses on double entry bookkeeping and introduces students to common business transactions.
This online bookkeeping course does not include an ACCA bookkeeping certification, but it can help you prepare to sit for the ACCA certification.
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The Final Word on Online Bookkeeping Courses
There’s a wealth of online bookkeeping courses available, many designed for beginners who are ready to launch their bookkeeping career. The downside with most courses is that they don’t teach anything about finding clients and actually launching a bookkeeping business, and that’s why we recommend our Brilliant Bookkeeper Course.
Brilliant Bookkeeper teaches you essential bookkeeping skills, how to run the books for your clients using QuickBooks and Xero, includes a community, and teaches client acquisition.
About Ariel Gardner
Ariel Gardner is the editor-in-chief of M$M, an elder millennial, and really wants to keep her lattes. She’s seen both ends of the financial spectrum, from trust funds to a paycheck to paycheck lifestyle, and uses that experience to empathize and connect with a wide range of readers. She has been editing and writing professionally for personal finance websites since 2015.
