Recommended bookkeeping courses and is it a good career move?

[beadyboo]

Bit of background. I was made redundant in December from a company I'd been at for 15 years. My job had changed over time and after 2 periods of maternity leave and a move from full to part time I felt like I'd lost my confidence. After a massive restructure, my role became redundant.
My personal circumstances have changed over time and DH now works away Monday to Friday so I need a job with flexibility to fit around children as I have no family help.
I worked in finance and have thought about using some of my redundancy payment to retrain as a bookkeeper. There seems to be lots of opportunities for flexible hours and lots of companies advertising for people with these skills. Could anyone recommend a course or study provider that they have used or if you recruit in this sector what qualifications do you look for. The courses all look quite expensive so I don't want to make a costly mistake. Thanks.

I'm also looking in to bookkeeping. It can be quite costly, having looked around I think the average is around £900 for the foundation course and another £750 for the advanced course. I'm still reviewing which provider to go through though. Sorry not much help!

Hi, I've recently retrained as a bookkeeper. I did the AAT via distance learning through Kaplan. It has been very expensive, but AAT is a respected qualification, and it means at the end you can do some accountancy work too, which means you'll be more versatile and can earn more (I charge £20 per hour for bookkeeping & £40 for accountancy). I do some self-employed work, and am also employed by an accountancy firm who I do adhoc stuff for.

I don't know about other courses, but certainly AAT is the one which is asked for in most of the job ads I've seen for bookkeepers.

Someone on another thread talked about doing the OU module in accountancy first, to see if they liked it, before committing to a full accountancy or bookkeeping qualification.

However, I do wonder whether the market for self-employed bookkeepers is going to shrink due to the increased availability of apps/packages?