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#5 in AccountingUdemyAccountingPaid courseAll Levels

Financial Accounting in Excel - New Business (Udemy.com)

We will start a comprehensive worksheet in Excel and enter journal entries related to setting up a new business.

Created by: Robert (Bob) Steele

Last updated August 2022

Our take

Based on the ratings of 2,087 students, a sample of their written reviews and the syllabus, as the course stood in August 2022. No course pays to be reviewed.

This is a short, free, Excel-based start to the accounting cycle. Over 14 lectures and about 1.9 hours, Robert Steele sets up a worksheet for a brand new business, enters journal entries, and posts them to a general ledger. It also covers debits and credits and basic Excel moves like adding, subtracting and summing. The stated audience is broad: business owners, accounting professionals and accounting students. In practice it suits someone new to the subject who wants to see the mechanics.

Reviewers mostly like it. Of 2,087 ratings, 905 are five stars and 712 are four. Students call the explanations clear and step by step, and one says it made the Excel formulas understandable. The complaints are small but real. One reviewer found the pace too fast and wanted slides of each procedure. Another liked the spreadsheets but said the delivery needed work. A two-star reviewer expected a run from journal entry to balance sheet and felt it leaned on QuickBooks.

The course was last updated in August 2022. There are no quizzes and no certificate, and only two sections, so think of it as a starter. In the Accounting group it sits beside broader options, such as the financial statement analysis training and the QuickBooks course. It's a low-risk first hour or two if you have Excel, and a stepping stone rather than a finish line.

Best forBeginners who want to watch journal entries and a general ledger built in Excel, not just read about them in a textbook.
Skip it ifYou need the full cycle through to financial statements, or want quizzes and a certificate.

Pros

  • Free and under two hours, so trying it costs very little time
  • Builds one worksheet from scratch, showing debits, credits and ledger posting on screen
  • Taught by a practicing CPA; reviewers call the explanations clear and step by step
  • Teaches basic Excel sums and formulas alongside the accounting

Cons

  • Only 14 lectures and no quizzes, so practice is limited to following along
  • Last updated in 2022, and one reviewer found the pace too fast without slides
  • Stops at journal entries and the ledger; one reviewer wanted it to reach a balance sheet
made the accounting a little more understanding when it comes to Excel and made the formulas understandable as well
Shaquana James, a student

Listed for all levels, but it really suits beginners. Excel helps, though you can watch without it.

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What you will learn

  • Debits & Credits
  • Excel Fundamentals - Add, Subtract, Sum Function
  • Journalize Journal Entries
  • Post Journal Entries to General Ledger

Course content

2 sections · 14 lectures · 1.9 hours of video 1 article

  1. 1Introduction 1 free preview3 lectures · 8 min
  2. 2Start a New Business Excel Worksheet11 lectures · 1.7 hours

Who it is for

The instructor says it suits

  • Business Owners
  • Accounting Professionals
  • Accounting Students
  • Students taking accounting courses
  • Business Owners

What you need before you start

  • We will use Excel. Having Excel will allow us to work through the problems along with the video. If we do not have Excel, we can still follow along with the comprehensive problem.

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Course Description

If we are a business owner or accounting professional who would like to get a better understanding of what our accounting software is doing

Or

An accounting student or student in general that would like to get a better understanding of what our accounting textbook is doing

This course is a course for us.

Business owners, accounting professionals, and accounting students often have the same problem with accounting. . .

that we are focused on one small component of the accounting process and not able to make all the necessary connections to other components of the accounting process to fully benefit from an understanding of how the business runs.

Business owners focus on cash flow and revenue, accounting professionals focus on their component of the accounting department and enter data into the accounting software, and accounting students focus on the topic they are currently working on.

Accounting professional often focus on one component of the accounting cycle like accounts receivable, accounts payable, or payroll often not having much time to consider the relationship with other areas of the accounting cycle.

Accounting software helps simplify the data entry process, but the simplification also restricts us from seeing how the data is being processed into the end product, into financial statements and reports.

Students are focused on one component of the accounting cycle at a time following an accounting textbook that is putting the pieces of the accounting puzzle together one step at a time.

As students zoom their focus into the current topic, they often lose sight of it fits into the larger objective and this loss of sight causes students to question the relevance of what they are losing. Student’s questioning the relevance of what they are learning causes students to lose interest. A loss of student interest causes students grades to fall.

Part of the reason accounting textbooks have a difficult time incorporating the current topic into the big picture is that a textbook is restricted by what can fit on a page and the problems a textbook provides are restricted by what a student can accomplish with paper and pencil.

The use of instructional video providing a step by step process along with Excel that allows students to sum up large columns of numbers in a short time provides the tools to create a comprehensive problem that will demonstrate current topics in the context of the entire accounting process.

Why Take This Course?

We will start to learn the accounting cycle in a comprehensive way and learn the fundamental of Excel.

Learning the accounting process without Excel or Excel without accounting is a waste of time and not an efficient way to learn either topic.

Like assets being equivalent to liabilities and equity, accounting is equivalent to Excel in many ways and therefore learning Excel will accelerate our learning of accounting and make what we learn more applicable.

Accounting is also the perfect tool to learn Excel. This course will not provide a broad overview of everything Excel can do because that is not a way to learn. Courses attempting to demonstrate all the functions Excel fail to create value for learners because learners will not retain what they learn without a foundation of core concepts and a reason for learning each new function.

This course will cover the fundamentals of Excel, those components used 99% of the time, and the components needed as a foundation for learning more about Excel.

The core components of Excel we will learn include adding, subtracting, and summing up columns of numbers.

We will learn the core concept of Excel through demonstration, repetition, and application to practical problems.

What Will Be Included in This Course?

In addition to instruction video we include an Excel worksheet with just about every presentation allowing us to both see the completed answer and work through the problems step by step along with the video.

Each Excel workbook includes at least two tabs. One tab will have the answer so that we can see how the completed worksheet is constructed and the second tab will provide us the opportunity to enter the data along with the instructional video.

Who Will We Be Learning From?

We will be learning from somebody who has practical accounting experience as a practicing CPA, teaching experience, curriculum design experience.

Credentials include:

We are learning from someone who has both instruction and curriculum development experience needed to construct comprehensive courses of a technical nature in a way that meets students’ needs and expectations.

 What Will We Learn?

We will learn how to complete the components of the accounting cycle and the fundamental of Excel including addition, subtraction, and the sum function.

Below is a short list of what is included in the accounting cycle and what we will cover in the course:

  • Journalizing journal entries
  • Posting to the general ledger
  • Create a trial balance
  • Financial statement generation

How Will We Be Taught?

We will learn through viewing and then doing.

We will demonstrate each component of the problem in small digestible parts using both a completed Excel worksheet and instructional video.

We will provide an Excel worksheet that can be filled in along with the instructional video or after watching the instructional video.

Please join us in learning Accounting, Excel, debits, and credits.

It will be Great 

Course Content Includes:

  • Start a New Business Section of Accounting & Excel Course
  • 05 Set up New Company Worksheet
  • 10 Set Up Inventory Items
  • 15 Set Up Customer Balances
  • 20 Set Up Vendors Beginning Balances
  • 25 Enter Opening Account Balances

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Instructor Details

Robert (Bob) Steele

Through working with students from many different schools, Mr. Steele has learned best practices for helping people understand accounting fast. Learning new skills and finding the best way to share knowledge with people who can benefit from it is a passion of his.    

Mr. Steele has experience working as a practicing Certified Public Accountant (CPA), an accounting and business instructor, and curriculum developer. He has enjoyed putting together quality tools to improve learning and has been teaching, making instructional resources, and building curriculum since 2009. He has been a practicing CPA since 2005. Mr. Steele is a practicing CPA, has a Certified Post-Secondary Instructor (CPI) credential, a Master of Science in taxation from Golden Gate University, a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Economics with an emphasis in accounting from The University of California Santa Barbara, and a Global Management Accounting Designation (CGMA) from The American Institute of CPA (AICPA).    

Mr. Steele has also authored five books that can be found on Amazon or in audiobook format on Audible. He has developed bestselling courses in accounting topics including financial accounting and QuickBooks accounting software.    

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Reviews

4.5

2,087 ratings on Udemy

Select a bar to show only those reviews.Select the bar again to show every rating.

By Rani Chinni on 6/20/2023

Great explanation(point-to-point emphasis,uses in everyone's point of view)...Gained so much knowledge through this course...Grateful..... Small suggestion(Name of the Course): Financial Accounting in Excel - Old Business but New Bookkeeping :-) Once Again,Thanks for sharing your knowledge...

By Chineze Obiako on 9/27/2021

Very good. Very very good. A great and sound teacher. Màkes you feel very confident and ready to take up any accounting task. Thank you

By Glennmark Rodrigues on 9/26/2019

the resources that we got through the website would not only be useful for the course but in practicality, this would definitely be a cheat score for me to complete my work faster and not to rely much on manual calculations

By M. Thierry Mwizerwa on 9/4/2019

It is a very interesting course because I used to work as an accountant assistant but we used traditional method but with this course, I'm learning how to use software and easy to record the transaction of the company.

By Harry Guo on 2/2/2019

Very good for beginners. I'd like to setup accounting for an existing company, but has no idea how to do it, especially for the debit/credit and where it goes. The class explains very well.

By Attila Kaman on 7/23/2018

This course is ideal for business owners, or students from any background. With this course, you can learn how to set up Quickbooks with Excel sheets for a New Business. It is enough detailed and you can get some takeaway from this process for any new company, for setting up a New Business and from how to build up an Excel&Quickbook system for the Business from the beginning. Explanation is clear, style is fast enough and easily understandable.

By Cesar Grossmann on 6/7/2018

I already had some knowledge with basic accounting, but never used a spreadsheet or accounting software, the course was a good starting point and gave me some ideas on how accounting can be done with a spreasheet.

By Malik Mehandi Samnani on 4/13/2018

If your know a little of accounting & Excel you will find this course very helpful. this course takes you through initial setup of accounting using excel and at the same time compares with Quick books software for accounting. Thanks

By Kimberly Niblack on 3/19/2018

This course was perfect for the beginner. It had great detail and a good bit of hands-on activities. The instructor was knowledgeable and covered a lot of information in a short amount of time. The downloadable resources are very useful.

By Jonelle Jeremiah on 2/15/2018

Short and sweet, to the point. It did not have enough lectures though and also it didnt have any exercises for the student to engage oneself in. Other than that it was a great course.Well done

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Overall Score : 90 / 100