Best Online Accounting Courses for Remote Workers
Accounting has long been one of the top job categories for remote work. Whether you need to brush up on certain concepts or learn something completely new, increase your accounting knowledge — and your qualifications for remote accounting jobs – through the courses offered here. Once you’ve completed a course, be sure to add it to your resume to improve your qualifications for remote accounting jobs.
Managerial Accounting Fundamentals
University of Virginia Darden School of Business | Coursera | Free | 13 hrs
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If you’re managing your own business but feel like you’re drowning under a sea of financial information that you need to help make informed decisions, this course is a great fit to teach you the fundamental things you need to know.
The course starts off by distinguishing between managerial and financial accounting and discussing cost behavior. Next, you will learn how to complete cost-volume-profit analysis. After that, you will learn what overhead rates are and how to allocate them within multiple types of systems. During the final week, you will learn how to complete cost-benefit analysis. Several quizzes help you practice these skills.
Federal Taxation I: Individuals, Employees, and Sole Proprietors
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | Coursera | $79 per month | 29 hrs
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If you want to run your own business but are scared by the prospect of dealing with complicated tax laws year after year, this is the course for you. This is the first course of five in the Coursera U.S. Federal Tax Specialization, and it also is part of the Master of Science program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Because it is the first course, students will start off learning the basics of tax, including the history of tax law. Later in the course, students will analyze the United States income tax structure and learn about basic tax deductions. Students will then build on that knowledge to learn about business deductions and complex itemized deductions. Over 40 short quizzes along the way help students get frequent practice applying these new concepts.
Financial Accounting Fundamentals
University of Virginia Darden School of Business | Coursera | Free | 13 hrs
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This course serves as a perfect introduction to the basics of financial accounting, including the three most common financial statements: the income statement, the balance sheet, and the statement of cash Flows.
You will first learn how to read and analyze these statements to draw basic conclusions about a company’s financial health, and then also how to write your own. By the end of the course, you will be writing journal entries to record transactions and using t-accounts to summarize transactions recorded during an accounting period. Professor Luann J. Lynch helps students practice these skills by using entertaining, fictional examples. If you enjoy this course, it is the first in a four course specialization on Coursera entitled Entrepreneurship: Growing Your Business, so you can take those courses to learn even more.
If you’re wanting to gain a better understanding of your personal finances, or perhaps wanting to start investing, this course provides a great, quick overview of the core tools and principles used by investors. Concepts covered include treasury bonds, consumption, mortgage loans, and the market value of assets. Annual Percentage Rate is another important aspect of this course, as that explains the cost of borrowing and credit cards.
You will also learn how to set up a Roth IRA special retirement account. The skills covered in this course may seem scary and time consuming, but once you understand the laws behind them, they become simple, and can lead to a greatly improved bank balance.
Forensic Accounting and Fraud Examination
West Virginia University | Coursera | Free | 10 hrs
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If you’ve ever been part of a company that’s been a victim to fraud, you know how devastating it can be to your business. This course will examine why people defraud companies, and what your company can do to catch them. Concepts covered include the “accidental” and “predator” fraudster and the differences between them, and how to use Benford analysis to identify fraudulent activities, cyber-crime, money laundering, and whistleblowing. While some of the other courses teach students how to build a strong financial company, this course emphasizes how to keep that same business from being torn down.
If you’re trying to start your own business but have minimal knowledge of accounting, this course could be a great fit for you. This course breaks accounting down to its most fundamental level, dividing it into two big questions: “What do I have?” and “How did I do it over time?” After students learn how to answer these questions, the course teaches how to apply them to basic components of doing business, such as building inventory and making sales.
University of Michigan business professor Greg Miller breaks down accounting in a practical way for those who may be afraid of getting bogged down in numbers. Once this foundation is established, the course concludes with an introduction to creating cash flow statements. Several short quizzes each week help students fine-tune their understanding of the content covered in the videos.
Auditing 1: Conceptual Foundations of Auditing
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | Coursera | Free | 27 hrs
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“Audit” is always a word that makes business owners feel a little sick to their stomach, but it doesn’t have to be worrisome. This introductory-level course will help you feel a little less queasy about the word and help you learn how to conduct audits of your own. Mark E. Peecher, a CPA, will walk through topics including auditing as a form of assurance, the risks of auditing, and the value of audits. In the second half of the course, Peecher moves on to discuss how to conduct financial statement auditing. He wraps up the course with a discussion of auditors’ professional and ethical responsibilities and how to measure audit quality. Frequent quizzes help students apply their skills.
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