Learn how to use Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2008 from a self-employed, Certified Public Accountant and small-business owner with 15 years experience in small business start-ups and accounting recordkeeping.

You don't need any prior accounting experience to use this software. Since it's a Microsoft product, it has the familiar Office look and feel and works smoothly with other Microsoft Office programs such as Word, Excel, and Outlook. Best of all, because it's tailored for small businesses with fewer than 25 employees, you'll find it easy to set up Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2008 to meet your specific needs.

Through easy-to-follow instructions and hands-on activities, you'll get comfortable with every major accounting task, including setting up a chart of accounts, billing customers, paying bills, managing inventory, handling payroll, and more. You'll also learn how to create an eBay listing and process PayPal payments completely within Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2008. By the time you complete this course, you'll find it a snap to apply what you learned to setting up your own small-business accounting records!

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Syllabus:

All courses run for six weeks, with a two-week grace period at the end. Two lessons are released each week for the six-week duration of the course. You do not have to be present when the lesson is released, but you must complete each lesson within two weeks of its release.

A new section of each course starts on the second or third Wednesday of each month. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

Week One

Wednesday - Lesson 01

In this lesson, you'll meet our project company, Fine Home Consultants Inc., which we'll work with throughout this course. Because Fine Home is both a service and goods provider, you'll learn how to account for many different types of business transactions. Our first task will be to set up the project company in Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2008. You'll enter basic company information and set up certain preferences, such as whether you'll operate on the cash or accrual basis of accounting. Not sure what this means? Don't worry! We'll go over basic accounting terms using clear-cut examples.

Friday - Lesson 02

The next task you'll need to address after setting up your company is creating a chart of accounts. Today, you'll learn what a chart of accounts is and how it's used. Then we'll take a closer look at each of the accounts within the chart of accounts. Using this info, you'll set up Fine Home's accounts, which will give you the foundation for setting up your own business's chart of accounts.

Week Two

Wednesday - Lesson 03

In this lesson, you'll find out how to write and print checks and make deposits into your checking account. These two tasks are basic to running your business. While paying bills isn't as much fun as receiving payments, you'll see that doing both is very easy. You also learn how to use the software to balance your checking account. After this lesson, you'll never again dread getting your bank statement!

Friday - Lesson 04

Now that you've written checks to pay bills, today you'll learn how to create vendors and item receipts for the items you purchase. By using this option, you'll tie together inventory and accounts payable with check writing. This makes it easier for you to keep an eye on who you owe money to so that you don't pay a vendor late by mistake. It's also the first step in job costing, which gives you much-needed feedback on how well you're managing expenses for different customers and jobs.

Week Three

Wednesday - Lesson 05

In this lesson, you'll learn how to quickly and easily convert item receipts to vendor bills. Then it's a snap to pay vendor bills, another task we'll cover in this lesson. You'll also create and review vendor-related reports and lists that give you the important big picture of your items available for sale and inventory.

Friday - Lesson 06

Now that you know how to enter inventory and service items, it's time to set up your customers and prepare quotes. Today, you'll learn how to enter information about your clients, ranging from their address to their credit limit. This is a great time-saving feature because once you set up a customer, all quotes and invoices you prepare in the future will automatically fill in with this information. You'll also find out how to prepare professional quotes to get approval from your customer prior to purchasing items for a job.

Week Four

Wednesday - Lesson 07

In this lesson, you'll discover how you can convert customer quotes to customer invoices with a click of the mouse. You'll also learn how easy it is to modify quotes and invoices if you make a mistake. Maybe you need to prepare cash invoices for walk-in customers. You'll see how to handle that task as well as how to prepare recurring invoices for customers whom you bill the same amount repeatedly.

Friday - Lesson 08

Everyone likes to get a paycheck. Today, you'll find out how to pay yourself, any employees, and any subcontractors you might have. After working through this lesson, you'll see that payroll's very easy to prepare. Yet, in spite of how easy it is, some business owners still consider it an annoying task. If you fall into this category, you'll learn about outsourcing your payroll to one of Microsoft's partners.

Week Five

Wednesday - Lesson 09

This lesson is a student favorite. You'll discover how to upload items for sale to eBay and handle customer payments in PayPal without leaving Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2008. We'll also explore how to manage your fixed assets and the often-baffling topic of depreciation.

Friday - Lesson 10

Today, you'll learn how to arrange all the day-to-day transactions you've been entering into reports, providing feedback about how profitable your project company is. You'll delve into the three financial statements: profit and loss, balance sheet, and cash flow. Each report takes the information you've entered and arranges it in a way that shows you something a little different about your company. When you create financial statement reports for your own business, they'll also give you guidance for future decision-making.

Week Six

Wednesday - Lesson 11

Every business requires you to make decisions. In this lesson, you'll learn about the day-to-day reports you can use for management decision making and efficient operations. For example, you'll look at the accounts receivable aging, which tells you how much your customers owe you, and the accounts payable report that tells you how much you owe vendors. You'll find that these reports are easy to access from Company Home, which gives you a snapshot of your company's overall financial condition. You'll also learn how to use the Physical Inventory Worksheet to take a count of your items available for sale.

Friday - Lesson 12

In our last lesson, you'll find out about various File menu options that will help you run your company. For example, you'll learn how to create a network with several employees using the software at the same time. You'll also see how to give those employees limited access to only those areas they need to work with. And finally, you'll find out how to integrate Microsoft Word and Excel with Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2008—a real time-saving feature of the software.

This course includes a knowledgeable and caring instructor who will guide you through your lessons, facilitate discussions, and answer your questions. The instructor for this course will be Mary Salzman .

Mary Salzman is a self-employed, Certified Public Accountant (CPA), as well as a university professor of undergraduate and graduate accounting. She has taught many clients how to use various types of accounting software and helped numerous new business owners with their start-up process and the preparation of the associated financial statements. As a small-business owner herself, Mary is very familiar with the unique challenges facing brand-new business owners.

Requirements:

Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2008 (software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins); Microsoft Windows Vista or XP; Internet access, e-mail, the Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox Web browser, and the Adobe Flash and PDF plug-ins (two free and simple downloads you obtain at http://www.adobe.com/downloads by clicking Get Adobe Flash Player and Get Adobe Reader). Note: this course is not suitable for Macintosh users.

Student Reviews:

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