Best Free Online Accounting Courses for Small Businesses

However, this is the age of the internet and therefore you can easily find plenty of online courses and sources – including the ones we’ve listed below – through which you can learn the basics of accounting and how to run your business instead of running it into the ground. And if you don’t fancy the digital format of these cloud accounting resources, remember: you can always convert to the traditional printed format.

Recommended online accounting courses and sources

Lynda.com

Provided by LinkedIn, Lynda.com offers a total of 39 online courses for every business owner, whether you are a beginner or a pro. With the help of these courses you can learn the use of QuickBooks/QuickBooks Online, the basics of accounting and how to manage your business life in a successful manner. Lynda.com courses can be accessed for $19.99 or $29.99 per month, but the first 10 days of use are free of charge.

Alison

If you prefer truly free of charge online courses, then Alison is the best choice for you. All you have to do is create an account and you can pick from 25 accounting courses, ideal for beginners, professionals and for those who simply want to broaden their knowledge. As a nice extra, you can learn the courses individually or select learning paths from marketing, accounting concepts to general finance and risk management.

AccountingCoach

Providing its free services since 2003, AccountingCoach is the ideal choice for learning accounting since its creator, Harold Averkamp, has written all 33 topics in a very understandable manner. The topics are categorized under bookkeeping, finance and business management, so everybody can find the best material to get a better grasp on accounting. To top it all off, for a one-time $49 fee you get access to the Pro features, including seminar videos, flashcards, visual tutorials, quick tests, PDF learning materials and easy progress tracking.

Small Business Doer

Founded by Greg Lam, a certified QuickBooks, Xero and Kashoo advisor since 2009, Small Business Doer is a free of charge website where sole-proprietors and very small business owners can learn the basics of starting and managing a business from an accounting point of view. The course is divided into 14 chapters, all of which come with exhaustive learning materials and video tutorials, but you can also download a useful textbook and try out what you have learned via an accounting equation cheat sheet and a system checklist.

BookkeepingMaster

The Bookkeeping Master (the pseudonym of Sam Morton) is the simplest of all online courses, since all of his material can be easily accessed on his YouTube channel, BookkeepingMaster. This means that you can learn bookkeeping, business planning, credit control, account management, payroll and the use of Xero, QuickBooks, Sage and KashFlow without paying a dime. However, for £65 (ca. $84) you can get access to exclusive material, and if needed Sam can also be hired as an official accountant.

Xero U

Last but not least, here is the joker of learning accounting: attending courses provided by the accounting company themselves, in our case, Xero. The company’s learning site, Xero U, has 47 courses (video series to be more precise) revolving around various topics like accounting 101, how to use Xero, and how to run a business in the cloud. From time to time you can enroll in 1 hour-long live webinars where you can further refine your knowledge on Xero. The best thing of all, however, is that aside from the webinars, everything can be accessed without limitations and completely free of charge.