In this very first post, I’ll be sharing about how I got to starting my bookkeeping career and how I feel about it so far.
My love affair with Finance began at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Work in digital marketing was slow and I had a lot of time in my hands. In order to keep myself busy and my mind sharp, I started learning about stock trading and investing. I enrolled in trading courses and tried my hand at trading equities, indices, and even cryptocurrencies. I then wanted to understand finance deeper so I browsed through sites like Coursera, Udemy, EdX in search of courses to satisfy my curiosity.
Fast forward to 2023. My Facebook feed got filled with ad after ad for Virtual Bookkeeping courses. Perhaps it was because I was googling everything accounting and investing while also searching for remote work I could do that wasn’t in the field of marketing. I didn’t even know virtual bookkeeping was a thing until then, but it seemed like the perfect fit since I still wanted to provide online business services but needed it to be related to finance.
December of the same year, I enrolled in two bookkeeping courses! Yes, two. I wanted to learn as much about starting a bookkeeping career as quickly as possible so I took both courses simultaneously. The courses covered some basic accounting but focused more heavily on using accounting software like QuickBooks and Xero.
There was a bit of a learning curve navigating each software, and I did make quite a number of mistakes my first few tries which was sometimes frustrating. After a bit of trial and error though, I was able to reconcile all accounts, complete all tasks and pass both courses on time. The next challenge was getting QBO and Xero certified. I chose the long route to certification in order to get a better understanding of how each tool worked and how I could use them efficiently. It took a while but I’m happy to share that I am now a certified Xero Advisor and QuickBooks ProAdvisor.
Even though it’s still a long way to go, I’m glad I decided to start my bookkeeping career. After a bit more training, I’m confident that I’ll be able to provide value to my bookkeeping clients and help them with their bookkeeping needs. Now, where to enroll next?
