Free Virtual Bookkeeping training scholarship in Nigeria

What you will learn

A ten-week certificate course in remote bookkeeping: bank feeds and matching, reconciliation every month, invoices and bills, payroll entries from the provider's report, the close, and the profit and loss an owner reads on a phone. Taught on QuickBooks Online and Xero, with fictional US clients whose numbers stay consistent from Week 1 to the final assessment.

• Bank feed matching and bank rules
• Monthly reconciliation, every account
• Invoices, payments and the undeposited-funds account
• Bills, vendor records and W-9s
• Payroll journal entries from a provider report
• Cost of goods sold and gross margin
• The month-end close checklist
• Profit and loss and balance sheet reading
• Writing to owners who do not speak accounting
• Year-end handover to the CPA

Eight weeks at a glance

1. Week 1: What a bookkeeper actually does. The job, the boundary and the client; the five buckets (assets, liabilities, equity, income, expenses); debits and credits without the mystery; the chart of accounts; the cloud ledger, users and the audit log.
2. Week 2: Bank feeds and reconciliation. How a feed works and what it is not; matching versus adding; bank rules for the boring, never the ambiguous; what reconciliation proves; when it does not balance.
3. Week 3: Sales, customers and money coming in. Estimates, invoices and sales receipts; terms and late fees; payments, deposits and the undeposited-funds trap; partial payments and credits.
4. Week 4: Purchases, vendors and money going out. Bills, expenses and cheques; vendor records and the W-9 you ask for before the first payment; recurring bills; the AP aging and the bill run the owner approves.
5. Week 5: Payroll, inventory and the trades. What the payroll provider does and what you record; payroll liabilities that must reconcile; inventory and cost of goods sold; the contractor, the clinic, the shop and the agency.
6. Week 6: Month-end close and reports. Why the close exists; the checklist; locking the period; the profit and loss read like the owner; the balance sheet and what looks wrong; the October pack.
7. Week 7: The client, the accountant and the hard conversations. Writing to an owner who does not speak accounting; questions in batches; reporting a problem without accusing anyone; year-end for the CPA; fraud signs a bookkeeper sees first; scope creep.
8. Week 8: Review and final assessment. The full cycle revisited, the reconciliation-first habit, the boundary revisited, mock questions, a month of feed lines as a practice set, and the assessment itself.
9. Week 9: Practicum, part one. Timed shifts on Ledgerline Books, a fictional bookkeeping practice with real-feeling clients: feed lines arrive, owners answer late, a payroll report lands on Thursday.
10. Week 10: Practicum, part two. More shifts including a downtime drill, a client's question you must not answer, a close under deadline, and a tutor-marked final. Passing needs zero critical errors.

Who this track suits

• You like things to balance, and a number that does not reconcile bothers you until you know why.
• You can ask a client a clear question and wait for the answer instead of guessing, because in this job a guess is a wrong entry that someone finds three months later.
• You are comfortable with a spreadsheet and willing to learn two cloud ledgers properly, QuickBooks Online and Xero, rather than clicking around either one.
• You can keep a client's finances confidential and stay inside your scope: recording and reporting, never advising on tax, never holding a client's bank login.

How to apply

1. 1
   Apply

   Fill in the form. It takes about two minutes. One application per email address, for one pool.

2. 2
   Get accepted

   Acceptance emails go out in batches. Watch your inbox.

3. 3
   Start learning

   Open your first course or your track the same day. You have six weeks to finish your first course or Week 1.

More about the scholarship

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