Bookkeeping - jumping right in

If someone a year ago would have told me that I would have achieved a Bookkeeping Certification in the last year I would have laughed at them. I probably would have laughed because it was something that I hadn’t thought about at all. Sure I am someone that has an accounting background and spent quite a few years as a Property Accountant and Budget Coordinator but saying that I want to help small businesses with their bookkeeping isn’t something that I really thought about.

Now the timeline of all of this bookkeeping idea is something that I am happy with because it all seems to have some together very quickly.

• In June we were at the Sage Summit and I found out about the IPBC (Institute of Professional Bookkeepers of Canada) and that is when things really started moving forward. IPBC has an exam that you can take to being certified if you meet certain requirements. I had looked at the requirements and I thought I had met all of them so I figured it was something to look into.
• I became a member of the IPBC in July and then signed up to attend their conference which was held in September.
• August was the month when I started to think about maybe taking the exam to become a Certified Professional Bookkeeper. I decided it was time to do some studying so that when I decided to write the exam I would be ready.
• In September while thinking about the conference I finally decided that I was going to write the exam while at the conference so registered to take the exam. I then finished up the studying and attended the conference where I work the exam and passed it. The conference was great as it gave me a chance to leave about some of the apps and also some of the other bits that I needed to start figuring out.
• October was another month of thinking things through and getting a little more organized and that is when I decided to find out about QuickBooks Online and see what it was like. I think started working with QuickBooks so that I can learn it and then continue to get the knowledge that I needed to say I could do bookkeeping for clients. I also in October take the QBO Core Certification course and write the exam. This step means that I am now a QBO Pro Advisor and have my core certificate.
• November was another month of doing some talking about being a bookkeeper and that is when I got the first perspective client and now to see how that goes.
• December there was one more conference and this time it was Intuit hosted the QuickBooks Connect 2017 in Toronto so I registered for the conference and spent three days learning more about QuickBooks and all the different apps that can assist in making things easier for both myself and also the clients. During the conference I then took the QBO Advanced Certification course and will hopefully soon write the exam for that certificate.

Now as you can see the entire idea of starting out with the bookkeeping business started about 5 months again and now I am sitting and happy with the idea and how I have been able to get things rolling as quickly as I have.

With the certification I need to have 20 hours of education each year in order to maintain the certification and as soon as I realized I needed that I started making sure that I was looking at the various webinars and such that would help me get this hours. I started getting the hours that I needed at the IPBC conference in September as that is when they could start for me and then I have participated in some webinars and now the QuickBooks Connect conference and am happy to see that I have already achieved my 20 hours for this coming membership year. I have already been able to achieve 41 education hours and I know that there are going to be more added before my certification anniversary comes around in September. 20 hours of education really isn’t hard if you look at webinars that are an hour long and you try to attend 1 or 2 each month. In my case I had 6 hours of education when I took the QuickBooks Core course and with the two conferences they are both helped with the hours as well. If yo are someone that needs to achieve education hours or cpe’s just think about how you can do them easily and get into a routine and stick to the routine even after you get the hours that you need. CPE’s are to help you gain knowledge so continuing to learn what you can is great.

Bookkeeping is something that I know I enjoy doing so now my new job is to work on getting the clients that I want and then start helping them makes their lives a little less stressful. Yes, 6 months later I am happy with what I have been able to achieve and now to see what the next 6 months have in store for me.