Electric Mid&Hi Fired Ceramics
Accounting 101 for Ceramic Artists
This documents the materials and classwork that was covered for basic bookkeeping that began in March and concluded at the beginning of May, 2012.
Through a combination of working through online tutorials, doing some excercises based on a fictitious potter's business, and subscribing to the free online accounting system at WaveAccounting.com, we learned together how to set up and maintain meaningful records of our businesses that are up to date, rather than finding out how we did at tax time. Balance sheets, profit and loss reports, accounts due and receivable do not come from the papers in a shoebox accounting system.
This was a peer-led group study effort.
The class can be repeated in the future if there is sufficient demand, and we expect to have more sophisticated tools for real time conferencing. An experienced instructor would be welcome to take over a future class.
Minimum number of students - 6
Maximum number of students - 12
Anticipated duration - 6 weeks
Anticipated start date - Undetermined
Required time commitment - 3-8 hours per week
Communications method - Private group discussion on the Cone6pots network and scheduled 90 minute Web conferences once a week.
Post comments and questions here.
Sign up by requesting to join this Group.
This is a fixed duration, class style study group covering basic accounting concepts and setting up our businesses on the online accounting system at WaveAccounting.com.
Participants are urged to check in and read all postings for this group at least 3 times per week.
There will be a $40 registration fee for the class. Those who complete the class with 70% or better participation will get a $20 refund or credit toward their next class.
Week 5 Tutorials and Activities
Read the Introductory lesson and Lesson 3 in the dwmbeancounter tutorials. This will give you a better grasp of what accounts you need to set up for your own business on waveaccounting.com
http://www.dwmbeancounter.com/moodle/mod/resource/view.php?id=14
Lessons 4 & 5 are very short, so you may want to look at them too. Our businesses are all small and relatively simple so there is really no need to worry about setting up a chart of accounts numbering system that is covered in lessons 1 & 2.
Activities for this week.
- Develop your chart of accounts and set them up on waveaccounting.com.
- Have the list ready to share with the group on Wednesday April 18, or post in your workspace prior to the discussion.
- Start entering your own transactions into the online accounting system (or if you don't plan to use it yourself, do Joe Potter's transactions from our exercises at the end of week 3.
Next week will be the final week of this class unless there are too many unresolved issues that come up in our final two chat sessions. We will look a little deeper into the waveaccounting system and we will look at the idea of closing out the books for an accounting period.
Talk with you on Wednesday.
George Lewter
Preclass Update:
If you are like me you have found the wave accounting system a bit frustrating to just jump into.
Exploring the waveaccounting web application, I see it will generate the reports we have been talking about, but they are not accessible in any meaningful way until we get a bit of data uploaded. And that can't happen until you know how, where, and why. There is a 48 minute video that will give you your introductory training in the use of waveaccounting. The video is embedded in the reply below this one. Note that there is a little button in the lower right corner of the video frame that will allow you to expand the display to full frame. The audio quality is not the greatest, but it understandable. Please try to watch the video before the class chat Wednesday night at 8 pm EDT.
I have created a Skype group for Wes, Troy, June, and myself. I will start a call with whoever shows up at the appointed time. We will simultaneously do text chat if one or more of you can't access Skype. Anyone else interested participating in the audio conference call should set me as a Skype contact - My USERNAME= geoglaznclay
Apr 17, 2012
George Lewter
WaveAccounting Video Introduction -- Length 48 minutes - Must see for New WaveAccounting.com users.
It really is indispensable to get you oriented within the application.
It would probably be best to view it twice ... once as an overview and the second time to pausing take notes on the activities and procedures that you will be using for your own transactions and to really understand the points.
Apr 17, 2012
George Lewter
Weekly Class meeting notes from Skye conversation Wed. April 18 8-9 pm
Covered idea that prepayment of a long term expense like a 6 month insurance premium payment should be an asset that can be transferred to an expense account over time. Asset value declines as expense rises.
For period ending reports some expenses like earned but unpaid wages, taxes, etc. must be accrued as liabilities for accurate point in time reports.
Wave accounting topics.
Stressed value of the introductory video.
Transactions can be split between two businesses under a users account and even split out to personal accounts.
The wave promotional literature and video stress connecting your financial accounts (bank, credit cards, paypal, etc.) to the web application for automatic updating and the greatest ease in loading transactions into wave accounting. You do not have to do that. You can manually download your transactions from your financial institution to your computer in a number of common formats. Then you can upload your transactions to waveaccounting. If you do this second technique there will be no direct connection between your financial institutions and waveaccounting.com. This may give you more peace of mind and is useful if you only want to update your finances once a month or so.
You can give a collaborator read only access or read/edit access to your waveaccounting books.
Since the meeting was audio on Skype, we do not have a text transcript. I will try to get recording capability up and running for the next session.
Apr 18, 2012