Discover the Best QuickBooks Classes in Los Angeles
The ancient Egyptians and Babylonians, once they came up with the idea for money, developed auditing systems to keep track of their funds. Thus some kinds of accounting practices are almost as old as currency. That said, the title “father of accounting” goes to the Italian Luca Pacioli, who, in 1494, published the best-seller Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalità that described the double-entry system of accounting that prevails to this day.
Pacioli’s system called, of course, for paper ledgers and journals, and accountants for the next five hundred years continued to keep their records in that time-honored scribal fashion. As computers popularized themselves, they were quick to get in on the accounting action, and the spreadsheet was born in 1985. Larger companies were able to implement their own digital accounting systems, but not until 1998 was there a lasting computerized accounting solution for medium- and small-sized businesses. That was Intuit’s QuickBooks.
Today, 80% of small businesses that use accounting software run QuickBooks. Small business owners can therefore take care of their books until their business expands to the point at which an additional pair of bookkeeping hands is required. Thus, in addition to those who would manage their own books, professional bookkeepers (either full-time employees or part-time freelancers) can make an entire career on QuickBooks. Finally, accountants themselves can benefit from knowing how to run the software, as they otherwise don’t stand much chance of understanding the books of their clients who avail themselves of Intuit’s software for day-to-day record keeping.
Best QuickBooks Classes & Schools in Los Angeles
If you live in Los Angeles and your psychic has suggested that you learn QuickBooks, you can get your bearings in the software from a class at Los Angeles Community College, QuickBooks Fundamentals I. In the space of a day, you’ll learn the rudiments of using the software to track bills, calculate sales tax and reconcile bank accounts. Further instruction in more advanced functions of QuickBooks is available from LACC’s QuickBooks Fundamentals II. These classes teach the desktop version of QuickBooks, which should not be confused with the cloud-based QuickBooks Online. The classes are taught as part of LACC’s wide-ranging adult education wing and take place on the school’s campus at Vermont and Santa Monica, in an area someone not from Los Angeles might be tempted to call East Hollywood.
If that location is too easterly, something quite a bit more westerly is to be found just blocks from where Olympic meets the 405. That would be ONLC Training Centers’ QuickBooks Desktop Introduction. In two days (from bright and early in the morning to mid-afternoon), the class will teach you to use the software to record bills, accounts, payments, invoices, and most of everything that goes with them. Note that, for those with no accounting background, a self-paced tutorial introducing basic accounting concepts is available to students who register for the class. Note also that ONLC’s classes are live hands-on affairs that are, however, taught by a remote instructor. If you’re more bent on learning QuickBooks Online, ONLC is at the ready with QuickBooks Online Quickstart, which takes place over the course of a single day (with a traffic-evading 7:00 a.m. start) and offers a preliminary grounding in the intricacies of the cloud-based version of the software. (The prevailing received wisdom is that the desktop version is considerably harder to learn than the online product.)
Los Angeles Industries That Use QuickBooks
According to State of California Employment Development Department third-quarter 2022 figures, the Los Angeles/Long Beach/Glendale metropolitan area (which carves out a large swath of enormous Los Angeles County) is home to more than 415,000 businesses with no more than four employees. Indeed, those 415,000 businesses have only 480,000-odd employees total, indicating that these businesses have, in the majority, much fewer than four employees. Quite a few of them are tiny sole-proprietorships and no doubt include no small number of aspiring (or starving) screenwriters. The ones who aren’t starving and their fellow very-small-business owners have books to keep, and, again, the overwhelming market share to which QuickBooks can lay claim points to the fact that the overwhelming majority of these people with their small businesses are probably running QuickBooks to keep track of them.
QuickBooks’ market penetration and versatility are such that it is used across seemingly every industry and small business – from food trucks to trendy boutiques to the aforementioned screenwriters. The software enables the owners of all these types of businesses to manage their own books without having to use an accountant or even a bookkeeper. As businesses grow, the keeping of QuickBooks can be turned over to a part-time freelance bookkeeper—there’s another small business that can use the software—and, eventually, a full-time bookkeeper on staff. One of the advantages of QuickBooks is that it can be with these businesses every step of the way.
QuickBooks Jobs & Salaries in Los Angeles
Above and beyond the single proprietors with very small businesses who keep their own books, QuickBooks creates jobs for those who can take care of the accounting duties for companies that have grown big enough to need a second pair of hands to track inventory, payments and, now that the business has one, payroll. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures for 2022 reveal that there are more than 65,000 bookkeepers and accounting clerks in the Los Angeles/Long Beach/Anaheim area (as the BLS defines Greater Los Angeles) and that they make an annual mean wage of nearly $53,000.
In addition to bookkeepers and small business owners, the other professionals who make use of QuickBooks are the accountants and auditors who provide their services to businesses that use the software. Intuit makes a special edition of QuickBooks for accountants who engage with the program in this way. The total number of accountants in the BLS’ idea of what constitutes the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area is just in excess of 61,000, and their annual mean wage is a highly respectable (even enviable) $92,500. Of course, not all accountants service the types of businesses that employ QuickBooks, some are involved with very large organizations indeed, but the over 244,000 businesses in the County of Los Angeles, most of which are small, require assistance with keeping track of their finances. The odds are that that will include both QuickBooks and an accountant.
