The company I work for is expanding quickly and I was wondering about getting some training to extend what knowledge I have. I did a level 2 bookkeeping qualification through home learning college and was wondering if anyone could advise what I should do next to get the best broad based knowledge?
Hi Caroline
Absolutely bombed out at the mo,so just a short one from me, sure some others will have a view. Depends what you want out of life for the future as well as the job you are doing now. Perhaps look at starting with the AAT as this is a good cross over between self employed and employed qualification. Given you have done some study I would go via the AAT website and take the skills test to see what level it suggests you start at, it may well be level 3. Also - it may well be that the company you currently work for will cover the cost of this training.
Have a good dig around this site, using AAT as your search option and you will find tons of stuff (including some debates about which quals are best)
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Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
Having never studied in this field, and therefore being qualified only by experience, I thought I'd take a look at the AAT SKills Test.
Hmm. :/
I got a few wrong because I did it very quickly and didn't read the questions properly. Ignoring those, though, here are a couple of interesting ones that I got wrong:
Question 16
"Select the correct closing balance of the account
An expense account has the following transactions recorded in it: Opening debit balance of £100, Debit transaction of £500, Credit transaction of £150."
My answer: £450 debit, calculated as £100 (debit) + £500 (debit) - £150 (credit)
But the correct answer, apparently, is £450 credit.
Question 25:
"Which of the following is the correct journal entry?
£1,000 rent paid has been debited to the rent receivable account. To correct this error a journal needs to be completed."
However, the correct answer, apparently, is "Debit suspense account £2,000, credit rent payable account £1,000, credit rent receivable account £1,000."
Wait! What?
Let's look at that again: £1,000 rent has been paid - I'll assume from the bank account - but instead of being debited to rent payable, it's been debited to rent receivable - so a very simple TB looks like this:
Bank Account
£1,000.00
Rents receivable
£1,000.00
My answer would clear the debit on rent receivable, and put a debit on rent payable - which is what the end result should be, but AAT Skillscheck suggests this is fixed by debiting £2,000 to suspense, then crediting each of rents payable and receivable with £1,000. This leads to:
Bank Account
£1,000.00
Rent Payable
£1,000.00
Suspense
£2,000.00
Are they on acid?
Question 26
I didn't bother answering this one. It says:
"Which ONE of the following errors alone could account for the difference?
Control accounts are used by many organisations to manage groups of accounts (for example trade receivables). The balance of the control account for trade receivables for a company was £21,000, and the total of a list of the customers account balances was"
And apparently the answer is "Discount allowed of £350 omitted from the trade receivables control account" - but where that £350 comes from I don't know. The question is clearly incomplete.
Interestingly, my "IT skills" get a green light - but I only spotted one question that is IT related, and while I gave the "correct" answer (because instinct told me what they'd think was correct), it is actually wrong.
Question 6
"Select ONE from the following list
Which of the following sample passwords (explanations are in brackets) would provide the best security?
rover (your dog's name) 12july (your birthday) hu56LL (a mix of upper and lower case and numbers) password (the word itself) chocolate (your favourite food)"
The "correct" answer is hu56LL - but that's not actually right. The correct answer should be one that is as long as is practical. The mixture of upper/lower case and numbers is only secure against someone seeing what you type into a password field, because it makes it harder for said onlooker to remember what you typed. When it comes to other attacks, you have to consider brute force - and for that, all characters are taken into account, so hu56LL is no more or less secure than abcdef - and both are therefore slightly less secure than "chocolate" and a LOT less secure than "correcthorsebatterystaple".
(In fact, I consider the XKCD password advice to be wrong as well; in terms of making the password long it's correct, but it's the suggestion that it's something memorable that's incorrect - if people only have one password, or a small number, to remember, fair enough. In practice, though, 1996 was *so* last week.)
Rant over.
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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
Now that I've re-read that thread, I do actually remember reading it the first time.
No, the VAT on discounts one is still the same. That's one I didn't read properly to start with - actually, I did exactly the same as you!
The key to having long, unmemorable passwords is to use a password manager; an encrypted database of passwords. Then - as per XKCD - you do only need the one memorable long password, to access that encrypted database! I use KeePass - but other options are available.
be careful with the sort of approach you use, though. In order to make it memorable for each and every site, there has to be a consistent pattern. Consistent patterns ultimately mean predictability once they are identified.
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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
Hate passwords - when you forget your password, you request a link to reset. Upon attempting to change your password your told you can't use an old password -
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Johnny - Owner of an overly-active keyboard.
A man who can read, yet doesn't, is in no way wiser than a man who can't.
There are a number of reasons you might change a password - one is because you've forgotten it, but another is because the password has been compromised.
Where a site doesn't let you use your previous password, it's probably erring on the side of caution in case of the latter possibility.
However, if you're changing the password by following a "forgotten password" type exchange - which is why you'd be sent a link - then it's probably safe for the site to assume that you've actually, er, forgotten the password, and that's why you've followed the "forgotten password" link.
If you're changing it because it's been compromised, you (or the very naughty person who has your password) would likely change it by logging in with it and changing it via the relevant account settings.
Logical thinking is too difficult for some, and everyone else has to put up with silly design decisions as a result - and the problem you describe is clearly one of them.
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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
Hey Vince - my thought was more inline with human failure, try 14 times to input the correct password, to then, after requesting the link, be told that your new password is actually the same as your last password:)
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Johnny - Owner of an overly-active keyboard.
A man who can read, yet doesn't, is in no way wiser than a man who can't.
