Bookkeeping Basics

Every business, from a spaza shop to a construction company, has to keep a record of the money that comes in and goes out. Owners need it to make decisions, SARS needs it to check tax, banks need it before they lend money, and auditors need it to check that nothing has gone missing. The person who keeps these records is the bookkeeper, and good bookkeepers are needed in every town in South Africa. This course teaches you the whole basic bookkeeping cycle step by step: what source documents are and how to check and file them, the accounting equation, debits and credits, the cash receipts and cash payments journals (the cash book), the debtors, creditors and general journals, posting to the ledgers, and drawing up a trial balance and finding errors. You also learn to manage petty cash and to reconcile the bank account. Every method is shown with worked examples from a small South African business, with all the numbers checked. The course is fully online and self-paced. Each lesson has a practice activity in your workbook. You finish with a practical bookkeeping task and a final assessment, and you receive a MetaCo Certificate of Completion that you can add to your CV.