

Ask HN: Self-study of basic accounting principles? - tokenadult

I did the expected HN search before asking. I'm wondering what recommendations you business owners have for learning enough about accounting principles for a business to maintain the business accounts during the initial growth phase and to understand what the professionals (accountants, lawyers, bankers) advise about business financial decisions. I'm very willing to do hard work in materials that have lots of exercises and problems, but we (co-founders and I) have very little accounting or even bookkeeping background. Are there online courses in accounting? What books are good about small business accounting? What other resources do you recommend? What software tools for actually keeping the books work well?
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bigohms
Must read for finance: [http://www.amazon.com/Finance-Managers-Harvard-
Business-Esse...](http://www.amazon.com/Finance-Managers-Harvard-Business-
Essentials/dp/1578518768/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1318341646&sr=8-3)

Business accounting: [http://www.amazon.com/Frank-Woods-Business-
Accounting-v/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Frank-Woods-Business-
Accounting-v/dp/0273712128/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1318341690&sr=8-2)

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tokenadult
There does seem to be an online course in principles of accounting

[http://www.aleks.com/about_aleks/course_products?cmscache=de...](http://www.aleks.com/about_aleks/course_products?cmscache=detailed&detailed=gbusiness11_poacs#gbusiness11_poacs)

that looks reasonably inexpensive and thorough, but I don't know how well the
online exercises will translate to planning a new accounting system for our
business(es).

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mjs00
A service like QuickBooks Online (<http://quickbooksonline.intuit.com/>)
combined with a part-time/hourly bookkeeper (a few hours a month) who has
experience in technology startups might be your best bet, then you can focus
on products and customers.

