February 7, 2024
The Hidden Skill Every Job Wants (It's Not Math!)
READ TIME - 5 MINUTES
At a glance
Here's what to expect:
- Everyone needs budget smarts: Skills like analyzing numbers and making financial plans = success in ANY job.
- School teaches circle math, but not how to read money: Learning basic accounting (like tracking income and expenses) should be standard, not an afterthought.
- Accounting made easy: Forget scary spreadsheets! Fun resources like YouTube and cheap courses can make anyone financially savvy.
Why accounting should be taught to everyone
While I didn't set any formal goals or resolutions for this year, one of my "always" goals is to read. (Shocker: I rarely allocate enough time for this "always" goal.)
Nevertheless, I went to Barnes & Noble this past weekend with my sister to "be productive." I picked up Financial Statements, Third Edition: A Step-by-Step Guide to Understanding and Creating Financial Reports by Thomas Ittelson [Amazon link]. Boy, it was a great read. I highly recommend it!
Every person should study and know accounting. (Disclaimer: I'm an accountant.) Now, before you roll your eyes, hear me out. In America, we will literally learn how to find the circumference of a circle, but our students have no idea how double-entry accounting works or how to read an income statement.
This is an issue because few jobs exist where budgeting, cost analysis, or critical thinking aren't a part of the job description — principles absolutely fundamental to accounting.
As a social media intern at a pharmaceutical company during college, I was frequently exposed to budgets, variance analyses, and many other accounting reports. We live in the data age; what do you expect?
The biggest thing we can do for our young people is align our academic curriculum to meet industry demands. In my marketing degree, I never learned about drafting a marketing budget, owning a P&L (profit and loss statement), or other essential accounting functions. And yet, many social media managers, brand managers, and different marketing roles do those tasks and more.
Accounting is an essential skill set all students should be adept in. The accompanying skills (e.g., analysis, recognizing patterns, drawing conclusions, etc.) are a vital precursor to success in many fields.
To wrap up, accounting really isn't that hard. It's said that you learn the mathematics portion of accounting in fourth grade; that is, accounting requires no further math than the basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division you learn as a fourth grader.
Much of it is semantics, like vocabulary and particular processes, that get you what you need to know.
Now that I've (hopefully) gotten my point across, let's talk about how I fell into my love for accounting.
My love for accounting + resources
My passion for accounting really stemmed from a need. As the founder of a charity, I knew proper financial and accounting education was necessary for leading an organization and complying with applicable laws.
Forget spreadsheets and debits – accounting used to sound as dry as toast crumbs to me, just another boring subject on the endless to-do list. But then, something unexpected happened. I stumbled into an accounting course at the local community college (shoutout to TCC!), and surprise! Numbers started singing.
I fell in love with how accounting was perfectly symmetrical and formulaic, and it just made sense.
If you're a nonprofit leader, I strongly recommend the following resources to learn accounting:
- Take an accounting course. Community colleges often offer cheap online courses that will provide you with an excellent fundamental introduction to accounting.
- Take courses or webinars specific to your industry. Within the realm of nonprofit accounting, QuickBooks Made Easy is a phenomenal resource for learning nonprofit-specific accounting and specializes in teaching QuickBooks, the most prominent accounting software used by charities around the country.
- Get on Facebook. I don't know why, but Facebook has some FIRE groups that helped me tremendously when I was entering the accounting world. One of them is the QuickBooks for Nonprofits Facebook group. It's a vivacious group with many helpful individuals like accountants, CPAs, nonprofit finance leaders, etc. Highly recommend!
- Check out YouTube videos. Accounting Stuff was an incredible resource when I was delving into financial statements and learning how they work. It's a great channel that I strongly recommend to people wanting to learn the basics. Edspira is another excellent account I recommend viewing.
Non-profits get the short end of the stick here, as our accounting is very similar to that of for-profits, but it's not exact. There is a grey area that's typically missed in educational accounting materials.
With that in mind, I will create a nonprofit accounting email course soon, sharing my many lessons in this field. Stay tuned.
Besides that, I strongly recommend learning QuickBooks, as it's the market's most widely used accounting software. Hector Garcia is a CPA with a phenomenal YouTube channel that teaches you how to use QuickBooks. It is one of the ways I became a QuickBooks pro myself!