DH starting own business, should one of us do a book keeping course?

[buntinglicious]

Or could we just learn from a book (bearing in mind a local course I found was £175)?

He is just in the process of researching and starting to feel overwhelmed with the financial/tax side of things. It's not even off the ground yet, and I don't want him to get demoralised at the outset.

Is it worth doing a course?

My DH went self employed in 2006 and then set up a business last year and he enlisted a accountant to do the tax returns as this is a mind field and i recommed doing this. He also told us what sort of things we needed to do, what things to keep and make note of during the tax year. It also depends on what sort of business you are setting up.

I did do a bookkeeping course through our local adult education centre the cost of the courses are less than doing it through a college and if you are on certain benefits it's also is cheaper. I would also suggest doing this as it has helped us understand the ins & outs of it.

I did a manual course first, and recently done a computerised course and have purchased a accounts software package which will make life alot easier then doing manually on spreadsheets.

Also i plan to take on some other peoples books and make a few pennies at the same time. as i'm a ftm.
I hope this info is helpful to you

Which package did you buy Looby?
I went with SAGE, horrible expensive and so was the training. I thought my accountant was using Sage so it would be easier - now I find she's using something called Tas.

the inland revenue do FREE courses on setting up, how to register etc.

We didn't do a course, I think as long as you keep everything organised it's fine. We bought Sage but didn't get on with it at all, so we just used Cashbook Software which came with our business bank account, it's very simple to just input ingoings and outgoings etc..

brought sage instants accounts as this is what i was using on the course i did.

VWLady: I also use TAS, which is brilliant. It was originally independent but was bought up by Sage, so that may explain the confusion.