Choosing the right QuickBooks Course is vital to the success of your – or your client’s – financial record keeping. From recording Accounts Payable to processing payments online, the best QuickBooks training can help you meet those goals.
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In this guide, I’ve rounded-up some of the best QuickBooks training classes to help you make the most of this easy-to-use bookkeeping program.
Based on the learning material, my experience with the courses, the overall review rating from other students, and the instructor’s expertise, I picked the best courses for both QuickBooks Online and Quickbooks Desktop.
But do you need QuickBooks Desktop or QuickBooks Online training? Well, that depends on the QuickBooks product you are using. Quickbooks Desktop is the software version that is installed directly on your computer and Quickbooks Online is accessed online, allowing for group use of the program.
BEST QUICKBOOKS COURSES
#1 Mastering QuickBooks Desktop: A Comprehensive Guide
- Level: Beginner to Advanced
- Course length: 155.5 hours, self-paced
- Prerequisites: Quickbooks Pro Desktop software
- Price: $109.99 Currently on sale for under $20.00
- Creator’s Credentials: Certified Public Accountant (CPA)
Key Features:
✔ You’ll understand the full accounting cycle including revenue, purchases, and payroll.
✔ You’ll create and work on a fictitious company, entering two month of data to get a good feel of how the accounting cycle and Quickbooks works.
✔ Learn how to generate financial reports and export them to Excel.
✔ Some of the hands-on work you’ll do includes creating budgets, inputting data into invoices and bills, and cutting checks in Quickbooks.
✔ Lessons on bank reconciliations and practice bank statements.
✔ More than 500 downloads to create life-like accounting and bookkeeping projects.
What I Like:
This course is easy to follow, even for new Quickbooks users, and you can jump around to any section depending on your needs and skill. As Quickbooks changes, so will this course. The creator’s goal is to update the course whenever necessary so you can use it now and in the future.
What I Don’t Like:
I thought some of the set-up and preferences lessons were a bit longer than they needed to be but they were good things to learn.
Review:
Your instructor is Bob Steel, a practicing Certified Public Accountant (CPA) who has been teaching accounting and bookkeeping since 2009. Currently, this online Quickbooks course has over 57,000 students with 79% of the reviews rating at least 4 out of 5 stars.
Being that this course is over 167 hours long, I expect it to be nothing less than comprehensive. It goes into great detail about Quickbooks for Desktop versions 2021, 2022 and 2023 and meets the needs for bookkeeping beginners as well as those with more advanced skills who want to learn how to use this program.
With 361 downloadable resources, you’ll create practice files and fake companies, processing 2-months worth of transactions to simulate how a real company performs their bookkeeping tasks with Quickbooks. You’ll start with working with the Chart of Accounts all the way through financial reports, with many lessons in-between.
Through the practice company, you get a full understanding of how QuickBooks Desktop utilizes the Accounts Payables, Receivables and Payroll cycles as well creating balance sheets and Profit and Loss reports. You’ll also learn both accounting terminology and Quickbooks terminology so you can communicate with QuickBooks users and accountants who don’t use QuickBooks.
In addition to learning how to use QuickBooks Online, this course goes through a lot of things I never considered, like how to set up QuickBooks Desktop on my computer for easy access and making the overall display easier to view. For example, my intro. screen is loaded with vendors, customers, and employee sections in the main body; navigational items on the left and company and banking information on the right. I can easily change the icon size and change the descriptions through the display settings
Then, once all the preferences and company setting are all set-up I was taken into the various lessons of AR, Sales, Vendor transactions and financial reporting. It took me over a month to go through this course but by the time I was done, I had a pretty good understanding of using QuickBooks Desktop.
#2 QuickBooks Online Vs. QuickBooks Desktop Vs. Excel
- Level: Beginner
- Course length: 172.5 hours
- Prerequisites: Basic accounting and computer knowledge
- Price: $69.99 (often goes on sale)
- Creator’s Credentials: Certified Public Accountant / accounting & business instructor.
Key Features:
✔ Walks you through setting-up QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Online, and Excel.
✔ Goes over vendor, AP, expenses and purchasing cycle for all three programs.
✔ Shows how to enter crucial elements such as customer and vendor information and opening balances.
✔ Explains common transactions and how to get them through each program.
✔ Covers the important reports with downloadable resources.
What I Like:
This QuickBooks Desktop/Online/Excel course is more hands-on than just listening to someone explain how QuickBooks works. The course goes deep into the details of adjusting entries in each platform, used to align financial statement reports to their accounting basis at the month or year-end. You’ll learn the management of different accounting bases such as accrual, cash, or tax basis across QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, and Excel as well as the differences between each platform. I like how I was able to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each platform in handling accounting transactions.
What I Don’t Like:
Because I’m pretty familiar with Excel, I didn’t think the Excel portion was necessary but for someone who needs a good, clear comparison of the 3 options I think you’ll get that here. I like the course, however, I wish there were more basic accounting lessons but I suppose that would be for another course.
Review:
I was actually quite interested in this QuickBooks course; I got a good feel of what it’s like to work in Quickbooks, both dDesktop and Online, and how those platforms compared to Excel. By the time I was done – which took about 2 weeks “on my time” – I was fully confident in being able to compare, contrast, and choose the best platform based on the specific requirements of my needs.
So, if you’re on the fence on which option you need, I think this course is a great eye-opener.
#3 Mastering QuickBooks Online 2023: A Comprehensive Guide
- Level: Beginner & Intermediate
- Course length: 186+ hours
- Prerequisites: Just a computer and internet
- Price: $119.99 (frequently goes on sale for under $20.00)
- Creator’s Credentials: Certified Public Accountant (CPA)
Key Features:
✔ 292 downloadable resources.
✔ Goes through various accounting bases such as accrual, cash, or tax basis and their application in QuickBooks Online.
✔ The course will cover the use of bank feed rules and how they are used to automate more of the accounting system.
✔ In-depth financial statement lessons on creating, understanding, formatting and customizing.
✔ Sections on financial reports and inventory
✔ Sections on adjusting and reversing entries.
✔ Over 4 hours devoted to the vendor, purchase, and sales cycles.
What I Like:
This course remains relevant – as QuickBooks Online updates, so will this course. I also appreciate how this course got me starting from the ground up, demonstrating how to access and install the QuickBooks software, potentially for FREE. Using a sample file provided by QuickBooks, I learned how to navigate the software, identify commonly-used areas, and comprehend the relationship between data input and the resultant financial statements and related reports. This course is very well organized and explained in a way to help beginners and intermediate users understand QuickBooks Online.
What I Don’t Like:
It is a very lengthy course and I found myself skipping through several lessons because I thought they were self-explanatory (like how to set up a chart of accounts) but if you’re new at this, then these lessons are good to go through. There were times when I thought the instructor repeated himself too often but because he rolls through the lessons pretty fast the repeats were actually helpful.
Review:
Your instructor, Bob Steele, speaks in an easy-to-unerstand manner without making you feel stupid. He’s a Certified Public Accountant with a Master of Science in taxation from Golden Gate University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Economics. He has been creating learning resources and building curriculum since 2009.
At over 186 hours, this course dives deep into all things QuickBooks Online and will take you a while to complete.
Like other online courses on this list, you’ll learn how to navigate the software, enter transactions, and generate reports. But what sets this course apart is the depth in which the instructor goes to explain everything you need to know about QuickBooks Online. You get more than the simple discussions of what the program does; you get hands-on experience working with the existing data then going on to create a new set of data and transactions for a fake company.
But what really sets this course apart are the sections devoted to bank feeds and how they fit into different accounting systems and how the application of the bank feeds tool differs as company needs change. For example, the use of bank feeds will vary for a company that uses a cash-based method and a company that uses an accrual method.
The first half of the course walks you through navigating QuickBooks Online with a free-to-use tool with a fake company, Craig’s Design and Landscaping Services. The purpose of this tool is to give you a good feel of how the program works. The dashboard shows you the most-used applications for this fake company, like invoicing and expenses and you’ll be navigating through the menu options listed on the left: Banking, Expenses, Sales, Projects…everything to build a company’s financial records.
Here’s a look at my dashboard with the navigation items on the left:
The second half of the course is all about creating a new QuickBooks file, including entering 2 months worth of data and business transactions into that file. The dashboard is pretty much the same as the free tool/fake company – it just has not yet been populated with data.
It’s important to note that for this second half, you do need your own QuickBooks Online software, but don’t worry because the instructor shows you how to get it for a free trial period.
#4 Mastering QuickBooks Online
- Level: Beginner
- Course length: 4 hours, self-paced
- Prerequisites: QuickBooks Online subscription and basic computer experience.
- Price: $69.99 (sometimes goes on sale for under $20.00)
- Creator’s Credentials: Certified QuickBooks Pro advisor and computerized accounting instructor.
Key Features:
✔ You’ll learn how to enter the most important transactions.
✔ Explains how to enter ‘items’ (product or service) into an items list and how it applies to invoices or sales receipts.
✔ Includes simulated ‘on-the-job’ scenarios to get a feel of how to solve problems with QuickBooks Online.
✔ Shows how to quickly and easily find and fix mistakes.
✔ Goes into some detail about the most important financial reports and why they’re needed.
✔ Thoroughly explains the dashboard and how to navigate the menu items.
What I Like:
This course is up-to-date and very clear and concise without going overboard in simplifying anything.
What I Don’t Like:
I don’t think I’ll become an expert with this course because I felt it focused more on the set-up and fundamentals and not enough on the accounting side of things.
Review:
Mark Smolen, the course instructor, personally guarantees you’ll get the clearest explanation for every QuickBooks Online topic so you can easily go from being a beginner to expert by the time you’re done with this training course. However, after finishing the course, I’m not quite a pro. I thing additional accounting and bookkeeping courses are needed to get a better understanding of accounting. That said, this course does a good job of explaining what you see when you get into QuickBooks Online.
You’ll learn every aspect to the QuickBooks Online setup, navigating through everything in the program that’s presented on your screen. The lessons walk you through a variety of transactions and all the important financial reports so you can start building a functioning bookkeeping system.
Additionally, you’ll learn how to find and fix input errors and search for any transaction entered in the program.
Something this course talks about, that I haven’t come across yet in any QuickBooks Online training course, is the explanation of the two interfaces: Business View and Accountant View. Apparently, when signing up it’s random which view your program is set-up as.
#5 Quickbooks Online Complex Issues and Advanced Techniques
- Level: Advanced
- Course length: 8 hours, self-paced
- Prerequisites: QuickbBooks Online subscription and working knowledge of QuickBooks
- Price: $74.99 (sometimes goes on sale for under $20.00)
- Creator’s Credentials: Certified QuickBooks Pro advisor and computerized accounting instructor.
Key Features:
✔ Lessons are follow-along-as-you-go or listen-and go-back to apply.
✔ Downloadable transaction list for creating real-life scenarios.
✔ Teaches you how to use the advanced ‘find transaction’ tool.
✔ You’ll learn how to process refunds of paid invoices (not taught in other courses).
✔ Lessons explaining how to reconcile customer’s and vendor’s transactions.
✔ Shows how to get a free QuickBooks
✔ Online account (Accountant’s Edition)Explains in detail where to find the frequently changed QuickBooks items.
What I Like:
What I appreciate most about this course is being able to sign up for a FREE QuickBooks account so I could follow along without having to buy a subscription plan. The instructor teaches in a way that is concise and easy to understand, making the lessons seem less difficult and advanced. If you have some experience using QuickBooks, this is a good course to pick up advanced techniques.
What I Don’t Like:
Although the instructor is very thorough, sometimes I felt he over-explained some things (like how to log onto QuickBooks). For the most part, though, the explainations were extremely helpful.
Review:
Mark Smolen is your instructor and he boasts over 20 years teaching computerized accounting and has taught QuickBooks at A.S.A college in Manhattan New York. His drive for creating this course is to help anyone using QuickBooks be prepared for the real-life, hands-on challenges that come with mastering the bookkeeping of any company.
For users of QuickBooks Online, this course goes into advanced lessons and transactions you’re not taught in other classes.
It is part 2 of the previous course, Mastering Quickbooks Online, and covers tips, techniques, and lessons that let you prove your financial records are correct and accurate. You’ll learn every complex issues and transactions related to Accounts Receivables and Payables, credit card processing, banking, and any ‘special’ transactions that may pop up.
To get started with this course, you need access to the QuickBooks Online software. If you already have a subscription, or your client has one, You’re good to go. If not, don’t worry because you’ll get a link to get a free version to use for this QuickBooks training.
I used the free edition, which is actually a full Accountant’s edition, and was able to ignore some of the more ‘Accountant-y’ items. Signing-up is simple: just follow the link in the course and create a user account.
Once signed in, I landed on the dashboard. The menu panel on the left has a lot of stuff not necessary for this course…I only needed the items under the ‘YOUR BOOKS’ section.
After getting comfortable with the dashboard, I was all set to go on with the course. The instructor did a very good job of walking me through at least 7 advanced transactions that come up when managing books.
Best QuickBooks Online Seminar
If you’d rather learn QuickBooks in a live setting, you can do so online just like attending an in-person seminar.
#6 Pryor Learning: How to Use Quickbooks
- Level: Beginner
- Course length: 1-day, 7-hours long online seminar,
- Prerequisites: Computer and internet
- Price: $149.00
- Creator’s Credentials: Pryor Learning SME qualifications.
Key Features:
✔ Live online workshop.
✔ You earn six hours of continuing professional education credits (CPE) credits.
✔ Certificate upon completion of course.
✔ You’ll learn how to set-up the most important aspects of bookkeeping: chart of accounts, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, income, and expenses.
✔ Goes over the built-in features for quick & accurate financial reporting.
✔ Discusses many shortcuts for navigating through QuickBooks’ menus, features and functions.
✔ This online Quickbooks seminar comes with a 100% buyer satisfaction guarantee.
What I Like:
What I like best about this Quckbooks class is the live instruction and interactive learning. Even though it is a live online event, there are many dates on the roster for future training sessions, allowing for easy scheduling and flexability. In addition to this QuickBooks seminar, Pryor Learning offers a library of courses in the areas of Sales, Human Resources, Microsoft Office, and many other business-related classes. You can purchase an annual pass for $499 that includes unlimited access to more than 12,000 live seminars.
What I Don’t Like:
Because it is a pre-scheduled live online seminar, you don’t have the luxury of accessing the training whenever you want or need to.
Review:
Brought to you by the esteemed Fred Pryor Seminars, this live, online seminar focuses on teaching participants QuickBooks basics and the use of all its built-in features and financial tracking options.
Fred Pryor Seminars, aka Pryor Learning, has been providing seminars since 1970 through their screened, pre-qualified subject matter experts. As far as the instructor for this quickbooks class goes, he or she meets all the qualifications imposed by Pryor Learning which includes an engaging personality with an interactive teaching style and strong presentation skills.
In one day, you’ll learn how to manage your inventory, track the costs of your business, generate professional invoices and purchase orders, stay on top of Accounts Payables and Receivables and help rid you of the frustrations that come with annual tax preparation.
Final Words
QuickBooks is a popular accounting and bookkeeping software that is easy-to-use and acknowledged by most companies, big and small. As a freelancer or business service provider, you can also use it to manage your own books.
Learning how to use QuickBooks is easy, as long as you have the right course. Which one of these courses did you go with ? Please feel free to leave a comment and let us know.
