Hi, I’m Alicia Katz Pollock from Questiva Consultants, the publisher of the most comprehensive hand-on QuickBooks training textbooks on the market. Check them out at www.questivaconsultants.com.
I have important information to share with bookkeeping course instructors out there, the college and vocational teachers who have been training students using QuickBooks Desktop for years, and are now planning to convert their courses to QuickBooks Online.
I want to help you understand what to expect when teaching QuickBooks Online for the first time.
The Same But Different
QuickBooks Online (QBO) and QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT) are simultaneously exactly the same and also completely different. The concepts you have been teaching for years haven’t changed. It’s just that the buttons you’ll click will be new.
You will still teach the accounting equation, Accounts Receivable workflows, Accounts Payable procedures, and advanced customer and vendor management. You’ll still create inventory, non-inventory, and service items to buy and sell. You’ll still analyze reports. If you’re using our QuickBooks Online Complete textbook you’ll also get to run payroll (which is MUCH easier!), manage inventory, and perform year-end closing procedures.
You’ll just need to get used to the new locations of these features, because the layout has a different organizational structure and appearance.
There are some differences between the two versions, beyond the interface. QBDT had some cumbersome workflows that aren’t in the new curriculum simply because QBO is easier to use. There are a few reports in QBDT that are not in QBO, and so this material has been removed from the book.
But most importantly, there are features in QuickBooks Online that were not in QuickBooks Desktop. For example, the Banking Feed is far more robust. A Projects Center brings together all the job costing tools into one place. Our new revised curriculum explores all these new tools.
Lessons
With a new book comes a new approach to managing the student files.
When you taught QuickBooks Desktop, your school provided the software and we provided the company files. Every chapter and exercise had its own pre-designed file. Students printed out their results for you to grade.
With QuickBooks Online, the chapters are taught using a sample company, Craig’s Design and Landscaping, at https://qbo.intuit.com/redir/testdrive (you can go there right now). This test file resets itself between sessions, and the lessons are designed with this fresh start in mind. This allows you to teach each chapter as a sequential yet standalone unit. Please note that some topics build on the information recently entered, and must be completed in the same session.
Apply Your Knowledge Exercises
At the end of each chapter is an Apply Your Knowledge exercise reinforcing the procedures taught in the lessons. For these activities, students are going to build an entire company from scratch, step by step. These hands-on real-world scenarios build on each other, chapter by chapter, until students have a completely functional service and retail practice file by the end of your course.
To manage your students’ grading, you’ll create your own instructor account at Intuit Education’s website. There you’ll set up each of your class sections, and add your students by entering or importing their email addresses. Upon receiving their invitations, students begin setting up Imagine Photography (the same company from your QBDT curriculum!) starting from the very beginning.
Students will design Imagine Photography’s general ledger, create and import customers and vendors, buy and sell products and services, and create daily receipts for camera gear sales and photo shoots. They’ll also purchase equipment, enter expenses through the Banking Feed and reconcile bank accounts. They’ll get to run reports to analyze the company’s profitability. If you’re using our QuickBooks Online Complete textbook, students will also set up jobs with progress invoicing, manage inventory, run payroll, and close out the fiscal year.
You will be able to use your Intuit Education Instructor Portal to open each student file any time to view their results, or to help them with the work. You might choose to have students print screenshots and reports, or save them digitally and submit them through your favorite online file sharing service. Our Instructor Manual contains screenshots of each step in the end-of-chapter exercises to serve as an answer key.
Capstone Projects
At the end of our QuickBooks Online Fundamentals book, there is a second practice scenario that can be used for reinforcement or as a final project. You’ll create a second shell, YinYang Graphic Design, for each student to start from scratch yet again. Students will serve as the bookkeeper setting up the company file, adding revenue and expenses, and preparing reports to analyze sales and profitability.
If you’re using our QuickBooks Online Complete book, this project file is continued as a capstone project at the end of the course. They’ll run lunch-and-learn marketing events, process payroll, and prepare for taxes.
So What’s Different?
As you can see, the outcomes and objectives of the QuickBooks Desktop and the QuickBooks Online courses are exactly the same. We even tried to maintain the flavor of the experience by preserving the Imagine Photography scenario.
Learning the new interface won’t take long at all. Once you’ve learned where to create a new invoice, or where to find the Reports center, it will quickly become second nature.
The biggest difference will be getting used to the new instruction workflow. You will have your own Education Portal to manage your roster, create training shells for students, and open their files to view progress and grade assignments.
Also new is that homework exercises build on each other, instead of starting each unit with a fresh file that was set up to contain all the requirements. Students will need to complete the homework assignments in order. Be sure that they also correct errors as they go, so that future reports have the correct answers.
Conclusion
The ability to easily view your students’ files for grading will give you a glimpse into the sharing capabilities celebrated in QuickBooks Online. This new approach to teaching will quickly become natural.
To support you in making the transition, we provide a full suite of ancillary Instructor’s Resources that will assist you in updating your courses to reflect the enhanced experience.
So head on over to www.questivaconsultants.com, order your textbooks, and get started on this exciting new chapter of your teaching career.
