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hi folks in this video i'm going to talk
about
how to get a bookkeeping certification
now the reason why i'm using air quotes
is because bookkeeping
is not a regulated profession
in the united states which means that
there's no
national or state entity that regulates
and does quality control
in any of these certifications available
for people that want to
practice as a bookkeeper therefore
you must get a certification from an
institution
or a private entity now this video is
accompanied by an
article i have on my website i'll put
link to the article in the description
below
where i have all the links to all the
different certifications
i will be discussing and i explain with
great length
the specific one that i recommend which
is the intuit certified
bookkeeping professional and i will
explain why specifically i'm
recommending that one
but before i deep dive into it i want to
discuss
these other four that are the
competitors so let's say the top five
contenders into the group let's start
with aipb
certified bookkeeper what's interesting
about aipb
and if you go to aipb.org you will find
all the information
you need to know about the certified
bookkeeper is that they actually
own the trademark on certified
bookkeeper
so no one else can use the terms
certified bookkeeper
just like that within this context
because they own that trademark
and they actually go after people that
end up using
certified bookkeeper that are not
members of the aipb or have not
received the credential from the aipb
now they are the oldest one in the group
i think i believe that they've been
doing this
for over 20 years so they're going to
have the most amount of traction
in the marketplace now i suspect that
the average small business owner
that will hire a bookkeeper either as a
full-time employee
or a freelancer or a professional
service they've never heard of the aipb
and that's kind of irrelevant
at the end of the day who gives you the
certification
what matters is is a certification going
to be relevant
will they teach you what you need and
will it make sure
that you know what you're doing now if
you go to the aipb
website and you can actually download a
15 page
booklet as a pdf document and the pdf
document
in one of the pages it tells you how
much it costs to take
the exam so according to the document i
download it
it costs 200 to take the exam it's a
four-part exam
and it also costs between 25 and 60
to register to take the exam so it will
cost you
again around 250 to become certified
with them
however i went through that
certification process
probably about 10 years ago and you do
need to get
their books in order to be able to pass
the exam they do
sell a set of books for between 250 and
300
something dollars depending on whether
you're a member or not
and it's a set of six books the books
are good
i will tell you i like the books when i
receive them but this is all
self study now you can actually go to a
local
college and take a course designed to
help you
prepare for this exam and is usually
around two thousand dollars
now this is not in i mean it's run by a
college
and most colleges have this course but
it's part of their online program
so this is all self-paced you would
literally pay two thousand dollars for a
self-paced program
uh and i believe that comes with the
books i don't remember 100 sure if that
does but
you know don't don't quote me on that
and once you go through that
whole process which is approximately six
months or 140 hours
worth of uh course hours then you'll be
you have enough knowledge to go take the
exam and pass it
so that's the aipb again they're the
oldest ones out there
they're probably the ones that have the
most amount of traction
but it's second on my list as you can
see from my article i still recommend
into a certified bookkeeping
professional and i'll get back to that
and i'll explain
why let's talk about the third one on
the list which is the dba
the certified digital bookkeeper so if
you go to
dba.org and you click on membership
you will see that in order for you to
become a certified did you go digital
bookkeeper
you have to become a member of their
association
the membership according to the website
and the day i recorded the video
is 500 a year or
2500 for a lifetime subscription
now once you become a member you'll be
eligible to take
the cdb certification it's called
certified
digital bookkeeper and you will pay for
the exam
don't remember what the exam is i know
it's like 10 different exams that
all accept like 250 as well so you
become a member you take the exam
the one thing i like about them and sort
of dislike about them
is that every two years you have to
recertify or maintain your certification
with continued education so so in order
to do that
you do have to continue to be a member i
believe they
provide all the continued education
self-study
when you're a member but you have to
renew that certification which is both a
good thing
and a bad thing right i mean it's good
because it forces you to stay up to date
and it's bad because in order to keep
your certification you gotta
keep at it so it's not sort of a
one-time thing so i do recommend
the dba specifically because ben
robinson was
a fellow cpa created it and or his team
created it
and he's got a great reputation in the
marketplace um so i think this one's a
great up and comer
i believe this one's about maybe a year
to a year and a half old
as of the date i'm creating this video
and it is the most
sort of digital one or the one that's
most focused
on cloud technologies and sort of
digital bookkeeping
i believe their certification is more
focused around the technology and not so
much
the accounting aspects that's where i
think the intuit
certified bookkeeping professional and
the certified bookkeeper from the aipb
the first two in the list those are more
focused on the
accounting fundamentals but i haven't
gone to the dba program so i
don't quote me on that i guess you would
have to find that out for yourself
the fourth one on my list is icb usaid
institute of certified bookkeepers so if
you go to their website
which is right here icbusa.org
you will see that there are some
membership programs
and if you actually click on pricing
you will see that in order to get access
to the exam
the certification exam that is 300 now
it's unclear to me
whether or not you have to be an annual
member
in order to take the exam i don't know
you would have to find out
on your own and i have not dug into the
curriculum
but uh the person that put this together
was a good friend of mine she's got a
great reputation in the marketplace and
she did this like
five or six years ago and i believe that
they probably put together a really good
curriculum
plus the icb is well known in the uk
this is a british
institute that's sort of trying to break
ground in the u.s
so that would be the fourth one in my
list and these are an
order that i recommend i think you
should look at them based on this order
again that's just my opinion
you can find uh find that out on your
own the fifth one on my list
is the knock pb or certified public
bookkeeper now i'm gonna go to the
website and um
i will tell you i'm gonna start right
now with a general grievance i have
about these people the problem with the
term
certified public bookkeeper is that it
sounds a lot like
certified public accountant which is
what i am
certified public accountant a cpa it's a
regulated
license by the state it not only
requires
150 hours of college time actual college
time you also have to pass a really
difficult exam
and it which is proctored it's a
four-part exam and each exam is like
three and a half to four hours
it's a it's a difficult undertaking with
a pretty big barrier of entry
now these people use the term certified
public bookkeeper
i don't know if it was to sort of
confuse the public or take advantage of
the brand confusion
of certified public but that's my
general grievance
around it now i have not gone through it
so i don't want to tell you
or judge whether it's good or bad if you
go on their website
you see that they have a whole bunch of
different things certified payroll
specialist certified quickbooks advisor
not 100 sure if that's even legal for
them to
use that quickbooks term without
permission from intuit a certified
public bookkeeper
certified accountant accounting
paraprofessional
cap kind of interesting certified
accounting analyst certified tax
professional
again any of these programs that you do
that forces you to learn and educate
yourself
are going to be a net positive but the
concept of this video is
is it worth certification wise if you go
down here
according to the website it will cost
you between 1300 and 1600
to i guess get tuition so i assume they
have some sort of course
i don't know if there's videos or if
it's self-paced
reading material i don't know but you
can check them out
uh nacbnacpb.org again
i am not going to do a strong
recommendation on that one but i
am including them in the top five uh
even though there's
a lot of other options out there and if
you do a simple google search
for certified bookkeeping or certified
bookkeeper
a bookkeeping certification they are
going to come out in those top five so i
wanted to
make you aware of the office existence
and my opinion about it okay so i
covered those
sort of last four in my top five list
and i wanna dig
deep into the into a certified uh
professional bookkeeper and the reason
why
i think the intuit is gonna be the one
that's worth your while
is because intuit is the maker of
quickbooks they have great brand
recognition
with quickbooks a lot of people
recognize intuit because of the
quickbooks brand
and i think that because most small
businesses
are using quickbooks they're going to
associate that intuit certified
professional bookkeeping certification
with
quickbooks as well even though there's a
separate
quickbooks certification called the
certified quickbooks
pro advisor which is very different than
this the pro advisor one
is more focused around the product
around quickbooks
where this one the certified bookkeeping
professional
but intuit is focused 100 in accounting
now if you go into the article i wrote i
do explain all this stuff i explain and
i go a little bit into more detail
and i have links to the courses now
the intuit professional certification
can be done in two ways
one you can just take the course so i'll
put
a link in the description below so you
can go straight into the course
you can just take the course via
coursera.org
again i'll put the direct link in there
so you're not stumbling around
searching for it you can take the course
and
just get the certificate of completion
from
coursera after you finish the course and
you get your certificate of completion
that's not the certification the
official certification
you actually have to pass an exam i will
put a link
to the video where you actually go into
pearson vue which is the sort of the
test administrator
for intuit you actually have to create
an account
in there and then once you create an
account and you
sign in you will then schedule
the exam you have to schedule the date
and the time because it is a proctored
exam and you have to pay
149 for it now you will notice
in the website that you can either take
the exam on site
in a certain port testing center and
then based on your zip code
you can search them and you can
physically go take the exam
and because of covid you actually have
the option of
not doing it through a testing center
and doing it remote
from your home now there's a sort of a
couple of steps
you have to take and they have to log in
to your computer and make sure your
computer
is conditioned for a proctor testing
environment but for most people
it should be a pretty simple process to
get
to do the test from their home now when
i go back
go back to the course for a second
because if you
are experienced you can skip the course
you don't have to take the course
you can go straight for the 150 exam
that's what i did of course i'm a cpa
i'm an experienced professional
it wasn't very difficult for me i didn't
have to study at all
i went ahead and took the exam and i
passed it on the first try
so for people that are experienced
whether they're cpas or not if they're
truly experienced and they understand
accounting or they have a basic
accounting degree
shouldn't be too difficult to pass
that exam however if you don't have much
experience or you do want the
preparation
for the exam you want to sign up for the
course
now i'm going to show you how you will
sign up for the course once you log into
coursera
you're going to see a link that says
enroll for free
now when you click on that link of
enroll for free you're going to have to
create an account
once you create an account you'll be
able to click here where says
start free trial now the way coursera
works
is they're gonna charge you fifty
dollars a month after the seven day
trial
until you complete the course now for
most people
it should be anywhere between one month
to four months to complete
according to them is a 16 week program
um i did the course super fast it
probably took me like a week but i say
someone with a little bit of experience
and you know dedicating a lot of time to
it should do it in under a month so it
just it should just be
a sort of a 49 a month
cost now instead of paying the 49 you
have the option
to click here where it says included in
coursera plus
and the coursera plus is 60 a month
instead of 50
a month and it includes access to over 3
000
courses they have in there so on top of
that quickbooks certification course
which sorry the intuit
certified bookkeeping course that is
included in there you're going to see a
whole bunch of other things
that you have access to so those are
basically your choices you either pay
49 just a month just for this course or
59 a month for this course and a whole
bunch of other things
that are available in coursera now i'm
going to log into the course to give you
a little bit preview so you can kind of
see
what that looks like let me zoom in a
little bit and you will see here that
it says enrolled now down here once i'm
enrolled into the
sort of the certificate program i'm
going to click here where it says
courses and when i click on courses
you're going gonna see that there's four
courses now each course is
set up to be four weeks each that's what
i meant by
16 weeks and you see this these courses
all have pretty
high ratings so you know you could be
comfortable these are
good courses once i click on any of
these courses i'll click on the first
one
bookkeeping basics you will see
you will see how they're broken down in
two weeks so if i click on week one
you will notice that we have all the
learning objectives here and then we
have videos
reading material videos practice quizzes
and this com
discussion prompt it's really really
cool about coursera is that there's
actually
uh professors and and
and moderators in these discussion
forums so if you click on discussion
forum
uh you can be in whichever week you're
in let's say i'm in week one
and then there are topics of discussion
and there's you know hundreds of replies
into any of them so you can you can
you know participate in these
discussions every week if you follow it
in a sort of week by week basis you
don't have to go through the discussion
forums you can just completely go into
each of the weeks and take all the
courses whether it's going to be uh the
videos
or the for example yours here's a video
whether it's
the the videos or the uh practice
quizzes
whichever you know whichever approach
you're gonna take you you're gonna have
to go through the
whole thing and again you don't have to
wait
a week or two to do them you can just
sit there and do the four weeks all in
one sitting
if you have time for that and then
you're gonna click here who says great
and you're gonna take the exams uh i
believe that
every single course has four exams one
per week per se
and you're gonna have to pass those
exams all four of them in order for you
to
quote past the course okay once you pass
the course
you're going to see here on the messages
it's going to say congratulations you
passed the course
again remember the certification
preparation is
four courses you have to pass all four
of them not just all four exams in one
course
so 16 exams in total pretty much so
you're going to click on view
accomplishments
and then you're going to get the little
certificate
of the course completion okay
now the certificate of the course
completion is not
the certification that you're a
certified
uh professional bookkeeper that's just
the
certificate that you completed the
course now that might have some value
in the marketplace but it's not the
official um
certification in the article as i
mentioned earlier
you want to get to the point where you
get this batch that logo once you have
that logo
when you're fully certified that's when
you can put that in your resume
in your social media and your business
cards in your website whatever you want
to put it in order to show off that you
are an intuit
certified bookkeeping professional now
let me go back to the course
again just to show you one more thing
and show you that this is part of an
intuit bookkeeping professional
certificate when you click on that
you're going to notice that there's four
courses in total
so you're going to have to go to each of
these four courses
bookkeeping basics assets in accounting
liabilities and equity and accounting
and financial statements you gotta go
through all
four courses there's four quizzes or
four exams
each in each side each course so it's
basically
16 weeks 16 tests in total again you can
do it a lot faster than that
you're going to be able to get a
certificate for each of the courses
and once you complete those four courses
that's when you go back
into the pearson view website that we
mentioned earlier
and you create the account and you pay
150 bucks to get your official
certification now one thing i want to
show you i'm going to go back to
coursera for a second once you're done
with coursera if you don't want to
continue to pay coursera you click on
your profile
you click on my purchases and then all
you have to do is click on
cancel subscription as long as you
finish the course through coursera and
you're gonna you're gonna pay those
monthly fees for as long as you're using
it and you take the exam you no longer
wanna need coursera
if you keep coursera check it out they
have ton of
uh all sorts of certificates are out
there for example
if i search uh just the word accounting
you will see that there's a course
called introduction
to finance and accounting that's a
really great companion course
it's included with that 60 plus
subscription so
this is one i would recommend that you
do because it is from the wharton
uh university of pennsylvania school
which has got great reputation so
getting a
certificate that you finish a course
from wharton should have
some value in the marketplace so anyway
i hope that was useful
for you if you again if you have no
certifications
but you know what you're doing you
probably don't need them if you have no
issues getting a job if you have no
issues
getting clients you don't need it
however
if you do need that batch or that
confidence boost
and you need a structural way to learn
accounting
i love that intuit certification course
again
because it's highly linked to intuit
quickbooks which has great branding in
the marketplace
and then once you become a certified
professional bookkeeper through
this into a certification you should
also look into the quickbooks
pro advisor certificate and those two in
combination
are really really important now how do
you become a pro advisor
basically just search the word pro
advisor
in google and it should be one of the
first
things that you find called in the into
a website
once you go in there it kind of looks
like this it's a
quick books for accounting professionals
that's where you can become a pro
advisor
and you can click on sign up for free as
of the date of this video
the pro advisor program for quickbooks
online the product quickbooks online
it's free so you can prove that you know
how to use the product
through the pro advisor program and then
you can prove
that you are a professional bookkeeper
through the intuit certificate so those
two
would be my recommendation again i
discuss all these things
in the article i mentioned earlier links
to everything i mentioned
and links to the article and all the
other websites are in the description
check them out and i hope that i taught
you the path to become
a certified bookkeeper of some sorts
thanks and i'll see you in the next one
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