What Are Accounting Classes Like?

One of the ways of knowing if you and accounting would make a good or perfect match is hearing about what the classes are like.  As we already know, accounting is basically tracking a company’s assets and liabilities to ensure what’s coming in and what’s going out are all balanced correctly. 

You will be logging transactions, making ledgers, and organizing items into different categories, preparing payrolls, taking care of taxes, etc. 

There’s expenses, revenue, liabilities, owner’s equity, and much more in Accounting. There are also different branches of Accounting like Cost Accounting, financial accounting, management Accounting, taxation, Auditing, etc. One misleading assumption that’s often made about accounting is that it will involve very difficult math. However, just because accountants work with numbers all day doesn’t mean accounting is full of complex equations. 

In reality, the math used in accounting is fairly simple, relying on basic addition and subtraction, multiplication and division, and a bit of algebra. None of it goes beyond a high school level. 

If you’re studying business, the calculus or statistics classes you will have to attend will likely be harder than accounting. So if you aren’t skilled at math or you dislike it as a subject, accounting will be tolerable and not impossible to pass.

The bulk of accounting is spent looking over balance sheets. This requires high attention to detail and remembering all the accounting rules you’re taught so you will be able to put the right numbers in the right positions. Good verbal and written skills also required in Accounting though it is based around a lot of numbers and a little math. 

Your professors will take time teaching you how to write for business. When it comes down to it, accounting is about mastering a skill set and then using it to complete repetitive tasks. In your first couple of accounting classes, you will discover whether you want to continue pursuing your Accounting careers or not. Maybe you’ll find it too complex after all. 

Maybe your mind doesn’t work in the same way as the logic of accounting principles, or maybe it’s just too boring for you. However, if you can understand the basics in the beginner classes, it will be easy to take that knowledge with you to the advanced, upper level classes.