11 easy and low-budget online bookkeeping courses

Benefits of online bookkeeping courses

An online bookkeeping course has several benefits over the traditional classroom, most notably affordability and convenience. Users can learn at their own pace, advancing whenever and wherever they want, and revisiting completed sections to get a better grip on the material.

Online bookkeeping courses are also considerably less expensive than in-person classes: We’ve found nearly a dozen platforms with free and low-cost options, whether you’re just auditing or pursuing a degree or certificate.

An online course will enable you to:

Learn accounting terminology and tasks

Are you trying to understand the difference between appreciation and amortization? Having trouble with financial reports or compliance monitoring? An online bookkeeping course allows you to go at your own pace and review material more than once. 

Discover core accounting methods

You’ll learn the two primary accounting strategies: The cash method, in which income is recorded when it is received and expenses are recorded when they’re paid, and the accrual method, where income is recorded when it’s earned and expenses are recorded when they are incurred.

Both methods can be incorporated into double-entry accounting, which ensures accuracy by recording at least one credit entry and one debit entry for each financial transaction.

Understand the value of finance ethics

Ethics and integrity are crucial in bookkeeping. You’ll learn about how transparency, accuracy, confidentiality and accountability in financial reporting and recordkeeping can help you meet company and regulatory standards, as well as foster an environment that engenders trust, enhances your reputation and expands your opportunities. 

Navigate critical financial statements

An online bookkeeping course will also introduce you to the three core financial statements:

• The income statement: Reports gross revenue minus expenses to arrive at the net income.
• The balance sheet: A snapshot of a business’s financial health at a given moment. Assets (what the company owns) are on the left and liabilities (what the company owes) are on the right, along with the equity, or the owner’s stake. Liabilities + Equity = Assets.
• The cash flow statement: Tracks the movement of cash in and out of the business over a set period. Divided into day-to-day operations, investing, and financing, it reveals whether profits are translating into actual cash generation.  

1. QuickBooks Training

QuickBooks offers online training courses about its software and bookkeeping basics. QuickBooks Training offers two comprehensive programs to help users feel confident when using QuickBooks software in as little as two days.

QuickBooks Training offers a two-day live online class with an expert instructor as well as a VIP membership with more than 200 hours of training. Both program options are available for less than $1,000. Bookkeepers and accountants can get QuickBooks Certified at the end of their training and examination. If you're a professional bookkeeper or accountant, QuickBooks Online Accountant gives you the tools to manage multiple clients and grow your practice.

The QuickBooks training program helps you:

• Understand bookkeeping and accounting concepts.
• Solve specific problems with the help of expert QuickBooks instructors.
• Discover small business tips and tricks that save time.
• Develop powerful reports that help businesses make good financial decisions.
• Customize QuickBooks for your business.
• Automate and simplify your work.

2. QuickBooks Live Expert Assisted

If you're more of a hands-on learner, QuickBooks Online may be the way to go. With this guided solution, users can save time with experts who can help them streamline workflows and take care of tedious bookkeeping tasks. 

QuickBooks Live Expert Assisted is an affordable way to stay on top of your business's books. Your access to live bookkeepers means you get personalized answers, all within your best-in-class financial software. 

With QuickBooks Live Expert Assisted, real experts are available to give you guidance and answer your questions on topics like:

• Categorization
• Automation
• Reconciliation
• Reporting
• Workflow management

Get support through QuickBooks Online for bookkeepers with a plan that can meet your specific needs. 

3. Coursera

Coursera is an online platform that offers courses by top instructors from world-class universities and companies. You can access some courses for free, though most require a monthly subscription to access. Courses include on-demand video lectures, homework exercises, and community discussion forums. Paid courses offer graded quizzes, projects, and a course certificate upon completion.

Beginning your first subscription to Coursera starts a seven-day free trial. On the eighth day, your free trial automatically becomes a paid subscription. Coursera Plus subscriptions, which come with a host of included classes, are priced reasonably as long as you're actively taking a course.

Coursera's bookkeeping courses cover a range of topics, including financial accounting, managerial accounting, and financial statement analysis. By the end of the course, you'll have a solid understanding of bookkeeping concepts, including assets, liabilities, and equity, as well as the ability to prepare financial statements and analyze financial data. You'll also learn about different types of bookkeeping software, including QuickBooks, Xero, and Wave. If you're new to the profession, understanding what a bookkeeper does can help clarify whether this career path is right for you.

Intuit, the company that created QuickBooks, offers bookkeeper certifications through Coursera. You can enroll for the Intuit Academy Bookkeeping Professional Certificate to get 65 hours' worth of training and a credential to show for your work.

Other bookkeeping courses you can take on Coursera include: 

• Bookkeeping Basics
• Financial Accounting Fundamentals
• Intro to Financial Accounting
• The Accounting Cycle
• Fundamentals of Accounting Specialization

4. Corporate Finance Institute (CFI)

Corporate Finance Institute (CFI) is an online platform that provides finance and accounting courses. CFI courses offer practical skills, templates, and tools to enhance your accounting knowledge.

Bookkeeping coursework at CFI will help you build a solid foundation, with sections on financial statements, double-entry bookkeeping, and other core principles. 

You can enroll in many classes and complete their training for free. If you want a certification, however, you need to purchase an annual CFI membership, which starts at $347.90.

Basic accounting and finance courses by CFI include:

• Accounting Fundamentals
• Excel Fundamentals
• Reading Financial Statements
• Budgeting and Forecasting

5. The Knowledge Academy

With over 30,000 courses across 190 countries, The Knowledge Academy is one of the world’s largest providers of training courses globally. It provides classes in wide-ranging categories such as business analysis, project management, business accounting, and bookkeeping. 

The Knowledge Academy's courses generally have a higher price tag than Coursera and the Corporate Finance Institute.

Accounting and bookkeeping classes from The Knowledge Academy include: 

• Bookkeeping
• Introduction to Payroll
• Accounting
• QuickBooks Masterclass
• Finance for Non-Financial Managers

6. Udemy

Founded in 2010, Udemy is a massive online learning platform packed with over 250,000 training courses that provide both certification prep and hands-on training in a host of fields, including data science, business analytics, web development, marketing, and AI. 

They’re designed to give students the tools needed to manage a company's finances, whether it’s their own business or as a professional bookkeeper.

Unlike Coursera and other competitors, Udemy allows you to purchase individual courses, including free and deeply discounted classes. Once you download a course, you usually have lifetime access to the material.

For those who prefer to shop a la carte, Udemy also has Personal Plan subscriptions that start at just $20 a month for access to over 26,000 courses. Users can take advantage of a 7-day free trial before committing to a paid subscription.

Accounting and bookkeeping classes at Udemy include:

• Mastering QuickBooks Online
• Bookkeeping Basics Explained
• Understanding payroll for beginners
• Accounting in 60 Minutes: A Brief Introduction
• Corporate finance for non-finance professionals

7. Khan Academy

Sal Khan has been bringing personalized learning to children and adults since 2008 with the Khan Academy, a nonprofit educational platform offering free, first-rate coursework in math, science, history, economics, finance, computer science, test prep (SAT, GRE, LSAT, etc), and more.

Advance at your own pace, with practice problems, quizzes.

and feedback that adapts to your progress.

Khan Academy accounting and finance courses include:

• Accounting and financial statements
• Financial literacy
• Economics & personal finance

8. edX

An online collaboration between Harvard and MIT, edX offers more than 3,000 top-level courses from over 3,000 universities, nonprofit organizations, and corporations.

You can audit business, management, engineering, humanities, computer science, and language courses for free from MIT, Berkeley, Columbia, and other top-tier schools. 

To earn an edX Verified Certificate or, after completing two to seven classes in a single subject, receive an XSeries Certificate, the fee typically ranges from $90 to $300. Bootcamps, executive education classes, and courses eligible for undergraduate and master's degrees have higher tuition rates.

Accounting and finance courses from edX include:

• Introduction to bookkeeping 
• Business accounting basics
• Financial accounting
• Accounting for decision-making
• Financial accounting made fun: Eliminating your fears

9. FutureLearn

The UK-based digital education platform FutureLearn offers free and low-budget access to more than 1,400 online courses from Johns Hopkins, Cambridge, the University College London, the University of Oslo, and other international institutions. 

Students can enroll in single courses, short course certificates, microcredentials, academic programs, or online degrees. 

There are also on-demand ExpertTracks, $39 subscriptions to specialty coursework that will help hone your business skills. (ExpertTracks come with a two-day free trial period during which you can cancel anytime and no payment is withdrawn.) 

The FutureLearn Unlimited subscription provides unlimited access to short courses (including certificates of completion) for $279.99 a year.

FutureLearn offers a variety of accounting and finance courses, including:

• Accounting 101
• Bookkeeping for Personal and Business Accounting
• The Accounting Method: Double Entry Bookkeeping
• Finance Fundamentals: Financial Planning and Budgeting
• Financial Accounting for Business Management

10. OpenLearn

Open University’s online learning hub, OpenLearn offers more than 900 free courses derived from OU's curriculum, plus dozens more commissioned open courses filtered by subject, study topic, workplace skill, and other criteria.

OpenLearn has a limited number of bookkeeping and finance classes, including:

• Introduction to bookkeeping and accounting
• Companies and financial accounting
• My career goal: Legal finance and accounting

11. YouTube

One of the largest social media platforms on Earth, YouTube is home to 51 million channels—including free educational content dedicated to accounting and bookkeeping. 

Users can access a wealth of content and learn at their own pace. 

Some of YT’s most relevant accounting channels include:

• Quickbooks
• Else Grech Accounting
• Accounting Stuff
• The Accounting Professor
• CPA Strength
• Farhat's Accounting Lectures

Spend more time growing your business

Bookkeeping courses don’t have to drain time or money. There are free and low-budget options online that enable you to learn at your own speed and avoid eating into your profits.

QuickBooks accounting software makes it easy to manage and grow your business, too, with unique insights that allow you to make smart spending decisions, AI-powered technology that can generate invoices and schedule payments, and live support from QuickBooks experts to guide you every step of the way. 

Explore features, compare plans, and discover how QuickBooks can help simplify your finances, so you can focus on growing your business.