Software to Learn?

[Bre]

Hello, I am currently doing my undergrad in Economics. I am teaching myself accountancy on the side, and plan to go for a CPA in California (It appears, many of my economics courses will satisfy "accounting related" course requirements for the California CPA license.)

I was wondering if there is any software that would be beneficial to learn?
I would like to eventually learn how to set up accounting systems for large organizations. I was looking into setting up a toy business in OpenERP. Would OpenERP be a good way to get an understanding of how accounting software works? Or are there other programs that might be better?

Thank you,
Bre

 

[mackwaa]

Hello, I am currently doing my undergrad in Economics. I am teaching myself accountancy on the side, and plan to go for a CPA in California (It appears, many of my economics courses will satisfy "accounting related" course requirements for the California CPA license.)

I was wondering if there is any software that would be beneficial to learn?
I would like to eventually learn how to set up accounting systems for large organizations. I was looking into setting up a toy business in OpenERP. Would OpenERP be a good way to get an understanding of how accounting software works? Or are there other programs that might be better?

Thank you,
Bre

Hi Bre

Hopefully I'm not going off on too much of a tangent here as I'm not quite sure if you're wanting to know how accounting software functions or whether you want to (eventaully) create your own piece of software.

My advice below is based on learning the functionality of accounting software rather than creating a specific software program for financials.

I install accounting software for large organisations and my advice would be to start simple and work upwards.

Start with a bank management program (ie banklink), then apply that knowledge to a medium size company software (ie peachtree) and finally to a large company system (ie SAP/Oracle/OpenERP).

Check out the functionality of the smaller programs and try and replicate these functions in the bigger programs.

Most of the large companies I've worked for have Oracle or SAP. The reason these two programs are thought to be so complex is mainly because they are incredibly flexible (so if you don't ask for exactly what you want you wont get it!) and they are built for flexibility not user-friendliness.

I always advise clients not to upgrade until they really must (ie they've maxed out the number of transactions or require specific reports).

I hope this is of some help.

Good luck