Whether you are a bookkeeper running your own practice or a business owner learning how to keep the books, the one thing you have in common is that your business needs to grow.

Because a business that is not growing is dying. If you are getting new leads, then you have the choice of turning them down, but if you're not, then eventually you will have no clients or customers left.

That's life right! But here's the thing, it's much easier than most people realise to grow a business. It just takes discipline, persistence and a plan.

And there is one really important thing you need to know.

If you become #1 in your niche, locality or industry, the clients come flooding to you. I realise that sounds very obvious, but few business owners I meet actually do this.

Which is why I opened Legendary Business Owners. it has one mission, to help you become #1 no matter how small or big your market it.

The first step is to visit the site: LegendaryBusinessOwners.com

Do it right now whilst you still remember and get the process started. You will love it.

My best
Quentin Pain FIAB

There are many accounting ratios and even more accounting management reports, so it can be a minefield to figure out what is really useful and what just wastes management (and clerical) time and money.

The underlying accounting equation is the called exactly that: the Accounting Equation and is the basis of all balance sheets.

Here it is: Assets = Liability + Equity.

Liability and Equity are what the business owes and assets are what the business owns. So why is what the business owes split into two sections?

Simple. Equity is what the business owes its owners (shareholders, partners and sole proprietors) whereas Liabilities are what the business owes its suppliers.

Assets are what the business owns itself. To understand that you need to remember that even a 1 person business always consists of two things: the owners and the business. They are separate things in the eyes of the law (or Inland Revenue).

But as a partner or sole-proprietor you are liable for the business' liabilities. This is why so many business owners opt to incorporate so they limit their liability to whatever they chose to invest in the business in the first place (and thus not lose your house over it).

We have outlined and explained all the other accounting ratios over on Accounting for Everyone, so take a look there and find out what your 'acid ratio' amongst many others.

The balance sheet is often seen as a report prepared from a set of business books created by bookkeepers for accountants to give to their clients and the inland revenue.
Over at Accounting for Everyone we show how it can also be viewed as just another account in the accounting system.
If you have ever been on a formal accounting or bookkeeping course you will not have heard that angle before, and it is not surprising.
Double-entry is not an intuitive thing to grasp for most people, so it tends to be taught in a very traditional way.
Which means not a lot of explanation, just a lot of example. And this is where Accounting for Everyone makes all the difference.
The ability to see double-entry from a logical point of view is what all students could really do with, and the Accounting for Everyone course does not let them down.
So if you start with a transaction and you post that to a journal, you will then know that you re-post the same information to a ledger (or at least you would if you were using a manual system).
From there you can create a profit and loss account (note that it is an account - not just a report) by reposting or copying the data from the ledgers.
And finally you can post the results of the profit and loss account to the balance sheet - account! And there you have it.
It's revolutionary yet pure logic. To learn more about double-entry, and accounting and bookkeeping head on over to http://accountingforeveryone.com and sign up for the free course.
You can also take a basic bookkeeping exam online from there for a small fee and find out how much you have learned during.

The number of free online accounting courses is quite limited, and of those not many are particularly good, but Accounting for Everyone is one of the diamonds in the pack.

It was put together from over 12 years of research into the double-entry model and how it can be explained in a logical way (and trust me, it is not easy to condense 1,000+ page hard to understand text books into something ordinary humans can grasp).

So in 1998 the first edition of the book that transformed double-entry hit the shelves of Amazon: Accounting for Everyone.

Now in its sixth edition, Accounting for Everyone has helped over 12,000 students get to grips with the fundamentals in a way no other course on accounting and bookkeeping ever has.

And best of all you can now get the whole 12 week online Accounting for Everyone course at no cost starting immediately.

When you finish, there is an optional Basic Bookkeeping Certificate online exam you can take for a small fee.

How Does The Accounting for Everyone Online Course Work?

If you sign up for the free version, each week the next module is unlocked. So, over a 12 week period you will get to do it all.

This includes the following modules:

1. Accounts (and what they really are - explained in detail)

2. Transactions in detail, but starting with the simplest so you get to grips immediately with how double-entry accounting works

3. Posting (it's good to know what's behind double-entry even if you never actually get to see it in software)

4. Ledgers (in the UK we have the Nominal Ledger in the USA it's called the General Ledger - become a global expert with Accounting for Everyone)

5. Traditional methods (so you can pass exams with ease - the logic explained)

6. The Trial Balance (another one of those often overlooked miracles that you need to understand in order to pass your bookkeeping exam)

7. The Profit and Loss Account (most people think the P&L is a report, we show you exactly why it is and has always been an Account - very new stuff here that really shows the logic every other book on the subject misses)

8. The Balance Sheet (this is a break-through week - we unravel the part most bookkeepers rarely go near)

9. Stock and Inventory (you need to know this as the majority of businesses buy and sell things and you will need to know how to account for it, and how that actually works - explained so simply anyone can get it)

10. Depreciation and Amortization (never before has depreciation been explained so efficiently - you won't forget how to handle it once you have been through this week's training and tasks)

11. VAT (for UK, Europe and many other countries) and Sales TAX (USA) taken apart and put back together so you will understand how it works.

12. The Wrap Up - are you ready for Certification? Absolutely you are.
You can also take advantage of our Fast Track + Certification option. With this you get to access the whole course immediately, so you can work as fast or slow as you like.

Plus you also get a downloadable version of the course workbook (150+ pages) including all the question and answer grids that enhance the Accounting for Everyone course.

And on top of that you get full access to our online Basic Bookkeeping Certification exam.

You can take this as many times as you like until you pass (unlike other courses!), but if you go through every week diligently you will have no problem passing the exam.

We show you simple memory methods not explained anywhere else on how to remember how to cope with debits and credits and getting them in the right order.

This one simple method alone has helped literally thousands of people pass their bookkeeping and accountancy exams.

So all you need to do now is decide which option you would prefer. Go to http://accountingforeveryone.com