New career in Payroll and Bookkeeping?

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Hiya, I’m hoping someone can give me some advice please on what courses to look at for Payroll and Bookkeeping? The only experience I’ve had is keeping my own accounts for a few years when I was a Childminder but this was a good 15 years ago now.
I’ve got 2 years until my youngest goes to school and I desperately need to get my teeth into something so I want to find some online courses to start. It seems that a lot of the part time college courses require you to be in an admin job already, I could possibly take over doing my husbands payroll for his company at some point but I feel like I need to build some knowledge first before I do that…
Any free courses to avoid? What is the most common software used for payroll and bookkeeping? I guess I will have to pay out for software 🫣 Or is there a recognised online course that most jobs in this sector would accept?

Thanks for any help

Sage seems to be very popular with smallish businesses but we use Quicken because it suited me! I do my own payroll through the government's basic PAYE tools.

I hope this helps.

I did an AAT level 2, I really enjoyed it and everyone there was from a different background, I did work in admin but some people on my course weren't working at all or were complete changers from other industries.
If I'm honest I'm not sure exactly how essential going to college was for the learning although I had a great time there, but mostly we read text books together and then did the end of unit questions quietly, I probably could have got most of that from just purchasing the text book for each unit.

You can book the unit exams independently without going to college, I think they were about £80 each.
After the course I couldn't afford the level 3 so I did the advanced bookkeeping and management accounting levels to kind of finish those as the beginner stages of those were in my level 2 and all I did was buy the books from Kaplan and book an exam locally.
In my workplace I use Xero and I've seen jobs advertised since that specify use of Xero.

I am a qualified accountant of 30 years and have been head of numerous finance departments in large companies. Other than perhaps in very small businesses, I don’t think you will often find roles that do both payroll and book keeping so maybe decide which one you want. Payroll is often outsourced in medium or large companies and hence why people are not doing both.

I personally think you would be better off trying to find an entry level position than taking a class in running payroll. There are loads of payroll systems out there but I don’t think it is worth purchasing some software as you won’t be able to do anything with it, they are not really designed for dummy data. I have never been involved in payroll professionally as it has never been in-house, but I run payroll for my husbands Ltd company and I use Brightpay for that.

If you decide on book keeping, AAT might be a useful introduction, although I would still be inclined to suggest you try to get an entry level job first.

I would recommend Institute of Certified Bookkeeping that offer widely recognised qualifications in bookkeeping and payroll. The qualifications can be studied online/remotely at your own pace. The training provider generally supplies a version of any accounting/payroll software as part of the course that is required in order for you to learn/practice on. I did my training with Ideal School who were great.
I’ve had a long career as a bookkeeper/payroll provider for all kinds of businesses & a few charities. It’s flexible (particularly if you’re self-employed) and there is always a need for bookkeepers whatever the state of the economy.
Software wise, cloud-based is generally where you will find most work. Xero & Quickbooks for accounting (and small payrolls) and Brightpay or Moneysoft for payroll.
Good Luck 😊