Learn how to track money for small businesses — recording every dollar in and out — and build a freelance bookkeeping practice using AI to work faster and more accurately.
Before you touch any software, you need to understand what bookkeeping actually is — how businesses earn money, spend money, and why every transaction has to be recorded. This phase teaches you the language of bookkeeping: debits, credits, accounts, and the chart of accounts. You'll learn double-entry bookkeeping by hand so you truly understand what's happening behind the screens. Without this foundation, you'll just be clicking buttons in software without knowing if the numbers are right.
Now you put the basics to work. You'll practice recording real-world transactions — invoices, bills, receipts, payroll entries, and bank deposits — into a general ledger. You'll learn how to categorize expenses correctly, handle accounts payable and accounts receivable, and reconcile a bank statement so every penny matches. This is the core daily work of a bookkeeper, and you need to be able to do it accurately and consistently before anything else matters.
Almost every small business client will expect you to use QuickBooks Online, so this phase gets you comfortable inside the software — setting up a company file, entering transactions, running reports, and connecting bank feeds. You'll also learn how to use Google Sheets for custom tracking, simple dashboards, and situations where a client doesn't have QuickBooks. By the end, you should be able to sit down at a client's QuickBooks account and know exactly what to do.
You need reps before you charge anyone. This phase walks you through doing bookkeeping for free — for a family member's side hustle, a friend's small business, a local church, or a nonprofit that needs help. You'll do a full month of books from start to finish: categorize transactions, reconcile the bank account, and produce a simple profit-and-loss report. This gives you real experience, a work sample to show future clients, and the confidence that you can actually do the job.
Freelance bookkeepers charge by the hour, by the month, or by the number of transactions — and picking the wrong pricing model can sink you. This phase covers how to price your work based on the size of the client, how to write a simple service agreement, how to send invoices, and how to set up your own business finances so your books are as clean as your clients'. You'll also learn what bookkeepers are liable for and where the line is between bookkeeping and accounting (you don't want to cross it).
Now that you know how to do the work, you'll learn how to use AI to speed it up. You'll use ChatGPT to draft client emails, explain unusual transactions, and write monthly summary notes for clients. You'll use Google Sheets with built-in AI features to catch categorization mistakes and spot patterns. You'll learn how to use QuickBooks' bank feed rules to auto-categorize recurring transactions. None of this replaces knowing the work — it just means you can handle more clients in less time.
Small businesses, landlords, freelancers, and sole proprietors all need bookkeeping help and most can't afford a full accounting firm. This phase teaches you how to find them — by reaching out to local businesses, posting in community groups, networking with tax preparers who can refer clients to you, and building a simple one-page website with Canva or Carrd. You'll learn how to run a discovery call, explain what you do in plain English, and close your first paying client.
Once you have two or three clients, the challenge shifts from finding work to managing it. This phase covers how to set up a monthly schedule so every client's books get done on time, how to use Google Calendar and Notion to track deadlines, how to handle month-end and year-end close processes, and how to hand off clean books to a client's tax preparer at tax time. You'll also learn when it makes sense to raise your rates, when to say no to a client, and how to build toward a full book of business that pays your bills reliably.
Name your project and Ari will coach you through every phase.
Free • No credit card • AI-coached