How to get CERTIFIED in QuickBooks

all right so i got this question that says how do i get certified in quickbooks uh do i need experience do i have to take an exam great questions i'm gonna go ahead and answer all three in this very thorough video i know the video is 20 minutes long over 20 minutes long but if you're committed to getting certified in quickbooks you might want to watch this whole thing regardless of what your background is now i want to mention that i am from the us and this entire video is within the context of the us i don't know what this looks like outside of united states please don't ask me don't put in the comments that i'm in india or whatever and i want to figure out how to get certified i don't know what it looks like anywhere else outside of the u.s so if you're not a u.s person you can watch the video but it might not help you because the information might not be relevant to you so again you're a us-based person and you might be an accountant and if you're an accountant a cpa a bookkeeper an accounting professional that works with multiple clients if you are that person then the certification program you're looking for is called the quickbooks pro advisor program you have to get certified and you have to get re-certified every year and the training is mostly focused around accounting concepts in quickbooks and people that manage multiple clients but let's say you're not an accountant and you are an end user you are someone that wants to get a job at a small business that uses quickbooks and in their interview question they ask you do you know quickbooks and you want to be able to say yes i know and i'm actually a certified user so that's called the quickbooks certified user certification that's an exam that you take once you get your certificate that's it you're certified forever for that year right these certifications get updated every couple of years and at some point people will say well that certification is 10 years old and that might not be relevant anymore but for the most part those are your two choices accountant quickbooks pro advisor program non-accountant you're gonna do quickbooks certified user we're gonna start with accountant and then right here i'm gonna put a timeline to all the different sections of the video you can skip to those minutes and seconds there if you if you want to skip the accountant portion and go straight to the non-accountant portion either way i think it'll be helpful for you to watch the whole thing because you might fall into any of the two categories all right let's jump right straight to it all right so let's start with the certification program for accounting professionals as i mentioned earlier this only matters to you if you are going to be working with multiple clients and you want to get certified and keep up with your certifications every year so to access this you're gonna go to proadvisor.intuit.com and you're gonna see two options one you should see a big button that says sign up for free they're gonna the first thing they're gonna offer is the free program and that's only for accounting professionals that are going to be supporting quickbooks online the online cloud edition only if you're going to be supporting quickbooks desktop and you want to get certified in quickbooks desktop then you would still sign up for the free program but then you're gonna have to add on or tack on the desktop subscription i'm gonna scroll down a little bit and go to here where it says desktop so we can see the options so they're gonna give you uh two ways you can add desktop to your pro advisor program you can pay for the regular desktop it's called the premiere bundle which is 449 per year you have to pay per year and that will give you access to the regular quickbooks desktop certification and then the second option is you can pay 7.99 per year which is the enterprise bundle which gives you access to both the standard desktop certification and the desktop enterprise certification on top of that these desktop subscriptions give you a free license of the software itself for the year that you purchased it so if you pay every single year for your membership and you keep up your membership you will get a new version of quickbooks every single year you will also have access to quickbooks desktop for mac and quickbooks uh point of sale which is for retail stores but it's also sort of a desktop edition the the mac at the point of sale are only available in the 7.99 a year subscription so people ask me wait hector what should i do should i do online only should i do desktop well it's up to you if you're an accounting professional and you have clients what are your clients using if your clients are all using quickbooks online then just click on sign up for free and set up your free account only work with the online version you don't have to pay a dime if you got clients working in in quickbooks desktop you're probably going to want to have a version a copy of the license in your computer so you can practice and play with it and you're probably gonna want to get certified um as well now i'm gonna log into my pro advisor program so you kind of see what the test process looks like so once you're logged into your account you're gonna see on the left hand side where on the accountant column per se you're gonna see a button that says pro advisor you're gonna click on pro advisor and then you're gonna click on training right so that path uh pro advisor training will then take you to all the available certifications so for example i'm going to collapse some of these and scroll down so you can see all the options i notice here's my quickbooks online certification you would click on the self-paced here this little link there you go to self-pace and you can click on any of these options and you're going to basically get an online course you click on start mostly it's text kind of explaining you things you click on continue lesson there's going to be some little videos on the side that kind of walk you through the lesson and you have to do everything that's in there and then once you're done uh covering all that then you're gonna take uh the exam so once you take the exam and you pass it and it's all it's all done online you don't physically have to go somewhere this is 100 online you go through the entire training for example the online training is estimated that it will take you a roughly about 7.5 hours to watch the lesson but they give you 15 cpe credits which for accountants it means education credits because between uh watching the videos reading the text going reading the material it might take you a full 15 hours of prep then you're going to click on download your certificate i'm going to show you that with a certificate looks like not a certificate but uh the actual um the actual batch so i'm gonna open open this up here oh there it is so there is certificate of completion hector garcia has passed quickbooks online certification here's the the quickbooks logo this is official this is the official quickbooks pro advisor uh certification you can you have the the batch in high resolution you can put that in your business cards in your website that sort of thing so again this is for accounting professionals i'm going to scroll down a little bit so we can see the other certifications and there should be a desktop certification here somewhere let me go down here to desktop courses keep scrolling down there it is so quickbooks desktop 20 2019 every year they're going to have a new certification you will click here on take exam after you've gone through all the self paced stuff and then you're gonna get your pop-up with the exam so i'm gonna kind of show you what this looks like so here's my questions there we go so uh you know there's your question you answer whatever you need to answer i'm already certified so i don't care all right so you answer all your questions you go through with it um it's usually 20 to 30 questions per section uh the desktop one i think it's like six or seven sections i'll we'll double check that right here so let's open up uh here the 2020. so we got one two three four five six seven eight nine 10 11 12. so it's 12 modules per se and i think that the exam is is three sections actually and then there's like three or four uh modules per exam so this is all uh quickbooks online pro advisor for accounting professional that's it in a nutshell you can either go free online or you can go desktop now so let's move on to the certifications for the non-accountants for the users right so first let me start with the concept that uh quickbooks intuit themselves do not give the certificates for the users they've actually sort of outsourced that to a company called certiport so i'm going to type certiport.com just so we can see the website i think i misspelled that so certiport.com okay there we go so in the start report website you're going to see tons of information about different certifications if i click on certifications and click on the drop down you're going to see one of these is called quickbooks so this is the company that officially gives the quickbooks certified user certification you definitely want to explore the website as we mentioned there'll be links in the description so you have links to all this you can you can you can see all the things that are out there the things i will tell you for sure that are worth downloading is you definitely want to download the program brochure open that up uh and let me just open it here because it gives you uh just kind of a overview of what the quickbooks certified user is actually i lied the brochure is actually not that useful there's something else all right let me go to learn here and let me scroll down i think it's right here the study guide this is this is what's useful so i'm going to click on the study guide download that and this is a pdf i'm going to zoom in a little bit that's 37 pages long tons of information this is basically sort of a quick guide that can help you get prepared for the exam the quickbooks certified user exam so you definitely want to get the guide and you want to print that out and at the end of the video i'm going to give you more guides more uh more things that you can study on top of that you need to also study from other guys but that's a good starting point you get the study guide uh from them all right so then after you you you've had some experience you've gone to the study guide what you're probably gonna want to do is take a practice exam and there's multiple ways to take a practice exam one of the things is to buy from them so i get somewhere here uh i think i think it's in the store actually right here you go to buy so you click on buy and then you click on individual purchaser so you're going to buy individual purchaser and then i'm going to click on shop certiport usa again this is for us market only again i have no idea what this looks like outside of us and then we're gonna click here on quickbooks and we're gonna click here on exam vouchers exam vouchers okay and there it is quickbooks certified user exam with retake and gmetrix practice test so this will cost you 156 dollars as of the date of this video and then once you purchase that they're gonna give you uh their own platform for you to take a practice exam actually i think you get two practice exams i want to make sure i'm not mischaracterizing that of course you click on the website and find out yourself i think it's two practice exams that you get and then you can take you have a voucher to take uh the official exam now pre pandemic the way this worked is you purchase your voucher and then you go into a certiport testing center you physically go to a starter protestant sensor and you take the test over there so for that i'm actually going to go to google because i'm recording this in september of 2020 and right now most testing centers are closed but i'm still going to type sir to port testing center because i'm sure that at some point once the pandemic's over um you know this will be different so i'm going to click here with a certain point started authorized testing center actually that wasn't the right one let me go back here it is locator and again i'll put a link to this one in the description so you can see it and this is where you can find a testing center close to you so i'm going to put my zip code and then put into it quickbooks and then put quickbooks online user us version apparently there's a global version of the exam not familiar with it only familiar with us and then we click on search and then the search is going to find near your zip code all the testing centers around and then your job is once you acquire that voucher is to call the testing center and say hey are you guys doing quickbooks exams are you open when are you open and you set up your appointment with them directly they're going to ask you for the voucher that you purchase again i'm going to switch over to the to the website through the certiport usa shopping cart website that was 150 six dollars you would have to buy this voucher where is it right here you have to buy the voucher get the the exam voucher and you would physically go to the testing center which you called and set up an appointment beforehand to take the exam and then they're the ones that will uh let you take the exam they'll proctor the exam and they'll give you a passing grade immediately i've actually my company is a sort of poor testing center so we've done tons of these in miami but we're also close because of the pandemic as of the date of this video i'm sure in the near future we'll be back in business and it'll be like like normal but anyway so that's how you do it right now i think and i haven't taken a test yet but the date of this video that i've done this i think that if you purchase the the the exam now and you cannot go to a testing center certiport will arrange for you to take the exam from home i i think they download something in your computer and they basically make your computer a testing computer so i don't know how that works i would contact certiport directly for that because i don't want to miss uh misinformed but that's what i understand on the pandemic times once the pandemic is over probably 2021 in the future we'll go back to the standard uh process for that now let me talk about how to get prepared for this exam and what is it right i think i skipped that part so the certified user exam is certified users it's users it's not for accounting professionals as we mentioned earlier you would want the pro advisor program if you're an accounting professional and the pro advisor program will test you on accounting stuff they'll ask you for debits credits financial statements core accounting knowledge that you would have to know in order to be able to pass the exam or prove to you that you are an accounting professional worth of being a quick book certified pro advisor this one's different certified user is not so much focus and accounting is more focused on the general usage of the software and it's also focused on can the can the person find the basic stuff candy can they find the invoice can they find the payment do they know how you know where that stuff is that's all the focus of this one as a matter of fact let me go back into the uh the regular certified website and show you something i'm going to go back into quickbooks and i'm going to show you the document that i probably should have shown you in the beginning which is the learning objectives because this will tell you exactly what's going to be in the exam or at least the general concepts that are in the exam again i'll put i'll put a link straight to the to the document so you can download it they just kind of hide it in here somewhere so let's see if i can find where this is okay there it is exam objectives right so i'm gonna do the online version and click on exam objectives and open up the pdf file in perfect this is the document that i wanted to show you so this document tells you everything that is covered so 14 of the exam is gonna be quickbooks setup and maintenance and here's every single thing that they're gonna they potentially could test you on twelve percent of the exam is list management and then you got uh twenty percent of the exam is sales and money in so invoices uh sales receipts estimates customer deposits that sort of thing and then you got eighteen percent of the exam would be purchases and money out so this would be bills purchase orders checks uh credit card charges uh accounts payable that sort of thing then we got basic accounting ten percent so there's a difference between the certified user and the pro advisor the pro advisor you would have to know basic accounting period is probably 20 to 50 percent of the exam it's implied that you understand accounting in this one it's only 10 of accounting so if you know nothing about accounting and you can nail every single one you can still get a 90. so basic accounting is not really that important but they will ask you stuff like okay what's a financial statement do you understand what a p l and a balance sheet is do you know what cash and accrual is do you know why you would do a closing date do you understand the mechanics of a journal entry so that's kind of the concept then they're gonna do eight percent on reports which is a little bit intertwined with basic accounting but for the most part is can you manipulate the reports can you customize them can you email them can you export them to excel that's what they're going to test you on and then uh this last one 18 sort of a potpourri so do you know the shortcuts do you know the custom fields uh do you know recurring transactions can you customize uh your your your orders um you know can you do timesheets so all that stuff is sort of built in into that very last um section which is 18 so this document again i'll put in the description so you can link and download it basically as a whole that's what you're gonna be uh tested on so let's talk about a couple of uh tips and tricks so you can get some additional education so one i wanna give you a website where you can request for me to send you what they call the uh customer's guide or the client's guide which is the document that they give to pro advisors to give to their customers so they can teach them quickbooks so i'm gonna go into my website real quick so i can show you where you're gonna go again the link is gonna be in the description and um and you're going to click on where it says uh right here pdf quickbooks guides you're going to click on that and uh the first one should be download free pdf guys for quickbooks so you're going to click there where it says uh get it now this is the client training and then i'll get an email and then you're gonna get an email back from me with that document this is the same document that i give to my clients when i'm teaching them how to use quickbooks and really it's a really cool document let me show you what it looks like and there it is it's basically 181 page document that contains um basically it's like a manual okay this was written by the people that into it so i give them credit for it it's a really really good guide kind of walks you through everything that you need to know about quickbooks um you know to learn how to use it to navigate through it this is not meant to help you pass an exam this is basically core training like if you were using quickbooks as an end user what would that experience look like so that's all explained in this manual so you can request that and i definitely recommend that there's no catch uh that that will put you in my meeting in my mailing list so when i sell courses and stuff of course i'm gonna advertise to you i won't knock you i promise but i will have your contact information if i come out with a course i will probably let you know at some point so that's something to to mention right because you are requesting for me to have it that guide is not available to the public you literally have to have a pro advisor um give it a privacy that supports desktop and online if you want to see those uh client guides and we have both the online and the desktop guides that we can give to our clients so that's basically uh one way the other thing you can do is you can actually take a practice exam that i designed right so i'm gonna give you the link to that which is a bit dot lee qbo cert prep and i'll put a link to that of course and then you're going to get into the website where you can take a practice exam that i designed i did this not to compete with starter port but this is for people that are not 100 sure they want to go spend 150 right now and they want to know whether or not they're ready to take a quickbooks exam do they know enough about it to do it so it's a 29 fee i use a platform called classmarker and uh and basically would be you can have three takes and it will be a 60 question exam so the actual official um the official exam is actually 50 questions but i made it 60 questions and i made it an extra 10 minutes to give you the 10 minutes to answer the questions because um 50 of the questions will be core questions that are very similar to their exam objectives and 10 of the questions is from my own set of questions that i ask people that want to work in my firm right so basically i mix it up a little bit between uh questions that look like the stuff that's in the exam objectives and 10 extra of mine that is like what i would want someone to know if they're gonna work uh for me if they pretend to say that they're certified in quickbooks i need to know that they have that basic knowledge so i'll walk you through how to do this real quick just so people don't get confused so first you enter your email okay and then you create a password you click on start okay and then you click on start then you're gonna put you're gonna fill out your information so you put your name and email again and there is the first one is like the account to take the exam the second one is where you want the results of the exam to be sent to right so let's say i'm in miami florida usa and then i'll click on start okay then it says we're going to charge you 30. 29 bucks and we're going to click on continue then you're going to see this pop up this other page that is a paypal payment portal you can either click on login to paypal and use your paypal credentials to pay if you happen to have a paypal account or you can click here where it says pay with a credit card or debit and then you don't need to have a paypal account basically you just enter your uh credit card information in there and then you have access to the exams so after your pay will look like this it'll give you some instructions so say that you have an hour it's uh 60 questions you got three attempts and you have to have an 80 to pass and the passing doesn't mean anything that just means that you probably are prepared to take the exam and then you're going to go ahead and click on start and then you're going to have your questions right so you're going to go through each one of these and and answer the question correctly the way you are supposed to right so i'll pick this one this is uh business partners i'll do the only answer i'll give you then i click on next and then you go answer all the questions right it tells you if you're gonna write if you got it wrong and you keep forward and you go through it so you'll be you won't be able once you answer it you won't be able to go back and do the test again i'm it helps me here in the preview mode but in reality you won't be able to do that so once you answer the questions you just go through and then you finish the exam and this will emulate what it feels like to take the actual certified user exam so you're going to take it once then you're going to get a result of all the things that you got wrong and the areas that you need to go back and study some more then you go back and study read your stuff read the documents that you got from me go to youtube go to all whatever you can find information and you take this exam again and hopefully after three tries you can get 80 or more and at that point maybe you'll have the confidence to take the official uh certified user exam so that's it uh kind of an infomercial for my practice exam i know um so that's up to you if you want to pay 30 bucks to get access to that i literally hand wrote all those questions and i thought about it hard and i wanted to make sure that the questions mimic the final exam i don't know what the final exam looks like i've never taken it actually i'm lying i took it like eight years ago um but i don't have the answer key i don't have the actual questions when you take the starter port exam it's a big pool of hundreds or thousands of questions that they can ask you from and i try to make my questions model after that exam quite a bit so in summary if you're an accounting professional you're going to go with the pro advisor program free for online 449 per year for a regular desktop 800 or 799 per year for desktop enterprise or you're going to get a certified user exam which will cost you 150 to take the exam and they do have some practice tests that comes if you buy the exam which is great you could take my practice test for 29 bucks or you can take a class to help you do that now i personally as of the date of this video i haven't published a class for cert prep yet however there is one company called real world training okay great name for a company by the way so real world training and you basically i'm basically gonna google real world training and then i'm gonna click in their website which is quickbookstraining.com this is the only people that officially sell a class to help you get certified uh so you click on quickbooks certification and you click on find classes near me and whenever the pandemic's over they're gonna have some in life classes because they've done live classes forever it's like 20 years they've been in the business they go to hotels and they put together basically a classroom there people pay and they go over there but right now as of the date of this video you can only take them online you click on sign up and the classes are pricey look there are 579. um it's virtual class is two days i believe nine to five the content's good i can't tell you it's not good but it is six hundred dollars right so something to to consider and and think about and i think i'm not 100 sure i think i don't want to get this wrong i think that when you take their class you get you actually get a voucher to take the exam i wonder if that's still true let me see that comes with a voucher you see okay what certification do i get students can validate their knowledge by taking the exam this test is offered but it costs 149 but it's free when you attend the class so yeah so that's still true so if you pay the 600 or whatever you take the class and the voucher is included so these are your options right so pay 150 bucks try it on your own no prep download the pdf that i'm gonna give you the stuff you find online maybe some free youtube videos or pay the 600 take the two-day class hopefully they give you all the tools that you need to to pass the exam and you have access to the to the test as well so that's it i hope you found this useful i know it was a pretty long video but hopefully your answer is clear on what your choices are thank you and i'll see you on the next one

Channel: Hector Garcia CPA

Views: 20,159

Rating: 4.9568968 out of 5

Keywords: learn quickbooks, quickbooks certification, quickbooks certification exam, quickbooks certification exam questions and answers, get certifed in quickbooks, how to get certified in quickbooks, how to get certified in quickbooks online, quickbooks certified, quickbooks online certified, quickbooks online test prep

Id: Ln45uMeffnc

Length: 26min 31sec (1591 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 18 2020