Financial Accounting & Bookkeeping: From Beginner to Pro (Udemy.com)

Accounting is the language of business

Learn financial accounting and bookkeeping from the ground up. Record transactions, complete the accounting cycle, prepare financial statements, and use them to make better business decisions.

Accounting is called the language of business because its sole purpose is to communicate information to decision makers. Whether you own a business, work for one, hope to start one, or invest in one, this course helps you understand where that information comes from, what it means, and how to use it.

Norm's goal is to help you become a better decision maker, not a bean counter. Once you speak the language, you gain what he calls an almost unfair advantage in business.

This course is built for beginners. You do not need prior accounting experience, advanced math, or accounting software. Norm explains the purpose first, shows how the pieces connect, and makes complex ideas understandable one step at a time.

A proven course with an extraordinary history

• The highest-rated accounting course on Udemy, trusted by more than 100,000 learners on Udemy and at schools around the world.

• Used by more than 100,000 learners across its broader history.

• Highlighted in The New York Times, Wired, and Gigaom.

• Recommended by Harvard to incoming MBA students who had not studied accounting.

Clayton Christensen, the late Harvard Business School professor and author of The Innovator's Dilemma, called Norm's teaching “extraordinary.”

Quick glance

• Built for beginners: Start with no accounting or bookkeeping background. Only basic arithmetic is required.

• Complex ideas made simple: Norm connects each concept to its business purpose before teaching the mechanics.

• Learn the complete system: Move from transactions and debits and credits through financial statements and financial analysis.

• Apply what you learn: Complete a Financial Practice Set using journals, ledgers, trial balances, adjustments, closing entries, and final statements.

• Become a better decision maker: Learn what the numbers mean and how to use them.

• Self-contained: This course delivers a complete financial-accounting and bookkeeping foundation. The rest of the series is optional.
  

31 hours? That’s the good news.

What makes this course unusually powerful is that nearly two-thirds of it is practice, worked problems, and guided walkthroughs, not lecture. You get far more than someone explaining accounting to you. You get the resources to work through it until it makes sense.

Think of it as about a 10.5-hour accounting course with an additional 21 hours of built-in practice and help.

• About 10.5 hours of clear instruction: Learn the complete financial-accounting and bookkeeping system and the logic behind it.

• About 21 hours of practice and problem-solving: Worked problems, demonstrations, detailed walkthroughs, and the complete Financial Practice Set.

• Choose what you need: New to a concept? Work through the practice. Already understand it? Move ahead.

• Keep it as a reference: Return to the exact problem, demonstration, or walkthrough whenever you need it.

One-third instruction. Two-thirds practice and problem-solving. That’s how accounting really starts to click.

Top University Accounting. Designed for Everyone.

This course comes from the #1 accounting university in the United States, but it wasn’t designed to feel like a course only accounting majors or college students could understand. It was built to make accounting understandable for people from all backgrounds and all walks of life.

From the beginning, the goal was to make powerful accounting concepts simple, practical, and easy to understand without sacrificing what makes the course so complete.

• College or no college: The course builds each concept step by step without assuming an accounting background.

• No advanced math required: Norm teaches the logic first, then shows you how the accounting works.

• Built for a global classroom: Learners studying in English as a second language successfully take this same course.

• Proven in very different learning environments: Through a philanthropic education program Norm supports, learners across Africa, the Philippines, the South Pacific, South America, and other emerging economies are taking this exact course. Many live in communities where access to higher education is limited, and they are succeeding, learning accounting, and applying it to start and strengthen small businesses.Accounting is broad, but Norm makes it understandable. He teaches the logic before the rules and shows how every part of the system connects.

That combination of depth and remarkable clarity is the magic of the course. It is also part of what made Norm's teaching stand out far beyond his own classroom, earning attention from Harvard and coverage in The New York Times and Wired.

The full accounting system. Taught so it makes sense.

Learn the system and understand what the numbers mean

You begin with business transactions, the accounting equation, and the four core financial statements. Then you record transactions with debits and credits, post them to ledgers, prepare a trial balance, make adjusting and closing entries, and complete the accounting cycle.

The Financial Practice Set brings the process together. You will set up a manual accounting system for a fictional company, record a realistic series of transactions, use special journals and subsidiary ledgers, and prepare completed financial statements.

This is not a QuickBooks or Xero tutorial. It teaches the double-entry bookkeeping system those tools are built on, so you understand the logic rather than merely learning where to click.

As the course progresses, you will learn to:

• Build and interpret financial statements: Balance sheet, income statement, statement of retained earnings, and statement of cash flows.