This is not a “memorise the chapter” roadmap.
I don't want our lessons to become “here is the definition, now memorise it.”
The real goal is different. Someone should eventually be able to hand you a pile of invoices, receipts, bank transactions and business records and you can actually say:
“Okay. I know what to do with this.”
We'll learn bookkeeping and Excel / Google Sheets together. Every spreadsheet skill will come from something you're actually doing as a bookkeeper.
We'll also keep the journey Canadian-focused, especially when we get into sales tax, GST/HST, payroll basics, reconciliations and month-end work.
50 minutes. But we're not cramming 50 minutes of theory. 🧠
The intensive learning is usually around 25 minutes. The rest of the lesson is for using the skill, practising, making mistakes and fixing them.
🔄 Quick Recap
What do you remember? Quick transactions and questions.
🧠 Today's Skill
One proper topic explained through examples and situations.
💻 Excel / Sheets
Put today's bookkeeping skill into a spreadsheet.
🎯 You Do It
You attempt it independently. We identify and fix gaps.
🌱 Let's Get Comfortable With Actual Bookkeeping
Build the foundation without turning it into a lecture.
What Actually Happens to a Transaction?
Follow one transaction through the entire bookkeeping system.
We'll take a Canadian business transaction and follow it from source document to journal, ledger, trial balance, adjustments and eventually financial statements.
💻 Excel
Your first bookkeeping spreadsheet: rows, columns, sheets, dates, tables, basic formatting and entering transactions.
Reading the Paperwork 🧾
Learn to figure out what actually happened from source documents.
Work with sales invoices, purchase invoices, receipts, credit notes, bank statements and expense records.
💻 Excel
Create a simple document tracker.
Where Does It Go?
Decide which book or record each transaction belongs in.
Sales, purchases, returns, cash, bank and general journal through practical “you tell me what you'd do” situations.
💻 Excel
Organise the records into separate sheets.
Debit or Credit? No More Guessing. ⚡
Break actual transactions down until the process becomes automatic.
What happened? Which accounts changed? Which one is debited? Which one is credited?
💻 Excel
Date | Description | Account | Debit | Credit | Amount
Let's Build the Ledger 📖
Move information into real ledger accounts and balance them.
Customer accounts, supplier accounts, bank, expenses, revenue and other general ledger accounts.
💻 Excel
Build a reusable ledger template.
Trial Balance 🧮
Build the trial balance and understand what it does — and doesn't — prove.
Take ledger balances and create a trial balance while exploring errors that can still exist even when it agrees.
💻 Excel
Make debit and credit totals calculate automatically.
Something Is Wrong. Find It. 🔎
Investigate records without being told where the error is.
Missing entries, wrong amounts, wrong accounts, duplicate entries and other common bookkeeping errors.
Fixing the Mistakes 🕵️
Find the right correction instead of simply identifying the error.
Work through correction entries and suspense accounts using scenarios instead of memorised lists.
Cash, Bank & Credit Card Transactions 💳
Handle the transactions you'll constantly see in bookkeeping.
Money in, money out, bank transfers, electronic payments, deposits, withdrawals and credit-card transactions.
💻 Excel
Create a running cash/bank record.
MINI BOOKKEEPING DAY 🧩
Your first practical check using a fictional Canadian business.
You decide: What happened → where does it go → how do I record it → what should the balance be?
💰 Now We Start Handling a Business
Reconciliations, receivables, payables, inventory and business records.
Bank Reconciliation 🏦
Find out why the bank statement and books don't match.
Outstanding cheques, deposits in transit, bank charges, automatic payments, interest and errors.
💻 Excel
Build your own bank reconciliation sheet.
Credit Card Reconciliation 💳
Reconcile business credit-card activity.
Purchases, payments, fees, business expenses and transactions that don't belong in the business books.
Petty Cash & Expenses ☕
Figure out what everyday business spending actually represents.
Coffee, stationery, parking, office supplies, reimbursements and missing receipts.
💻 Excel
Create an expense tracker to see where money is going.
Customers Who Owe the Business Money 👥
Build practical receivables knowledge.
Customer invoices, credit sales, payments, returns, credit notes and outstanding balances.
💻 Excel
Build a customer ledger.
Suppliers We Still Need to Pay 🏢
Work with the other side of the transaction.
Supplier invoices, payments, returns, credits and outstanding balances.
💻 Excel
Build a supplier ledger.
Who Owes What? ⏰
Understand outstanding and overdue customer and supplier balances.
Use aging and outstanding balances to identify who still owes the business and who the business still owes.
Control Accounts 🔄
Connect individual records with the control accounts.
Connect individual customer and supplier records with receivables and payables control accounts and check whether they agree.
Reconciliation Detective 🔎
Investigate deliberately mismatched records.
Maybe something wasn't posted. Maybe the wrong customer was used. Maybe the amount is wrong. You investigate.
Inventory 📦
Track stock coming in and going out.
Purchases, sales, returns, stock movement, cost of sales and inventory records.
💻 Excel
Build a simple inventory tracker.
YOUR FIRST MINI BUSINESS FILE 🇨🇦
Put multiple bookkeeping areas together in one Canadian business.
A fictional Canadian business with sales, purchases, bank transactions, customers, suppliers, expenses and inventory.
🇨🇦 Now We Get Into the Canadian Side
Sales taxes, payroll basics, CRA-related records and month-end.
GST, HST, PST & QST 🇨🇦
Make Canadian sales taxes understandable from a bookkeeping perspective.
GST, HST, PST and QST, including why treatment can differ depending on the province and transaction.
🎯 Focus
The aim isn't to turn you into a tax specialist. It's to make Canadian sales-tax information understandable when it appears in the books.
Recording GST/HST 🧾
Work from Canadian-looking invoices to the correct bookkeeping treatment.
Sale amount → tax → total → bookkeeping treatment. Practise both sales and purchases.
💻 Excel
Create a GST/HST tracking sheet.
GST/HST Reconciliation 🔍
Check whether the tax information recorded actually makes sense.
Investigate missing tax amounts, incorrect tax amounts, incorrectly classified transactions and differences between records.
Canadian Payroll Basics 👩💼
Understand payroll from a bookkeeper's point of view.
Gross pay, employee deductions, net pay, employer payroll amounts, payroll liabilities and payroll payments/remittances.
Recording Payroll 💰
Follow a payroll example through the books.
Take a payroll example and work out how the numbers flow through the books.
💻 Excel
Build a simple payroll register.
CRA-Related Bookkeeping Records 📋
Keep Canadian bookkeeping documentation organised.
GST/HST, payroll, business expenses, supporting documents, reconciliations and tax-related records.
🎯 Focus
Good bookkeeping and documentation, rather than covering every Canadian tax rule.
Accruals & Prepayments ⏳
Decide which accounting period an expense belongs to.
Insurance, rent, subscriptions, utilities and professional fees. Does the expense belong to this month, next month or both?
Fixed Assets & Depreciation 🏢
Build an asset register and work with depreciation.
Computers, equipment, furniture and vehicles.
💻 Excel
Build an asset register and depreciation schedule.
What Happens at Month-End? 📅
Create an actual month-end bookkeeping routine.
Bank, credit cards, customers, suppliers, inventory, expenses, GST/HST, payroll, adjustments and trial balance.
💻 Output
Your own practical month-end checklist.
CANADIAN MONTH-END PROJECT 🇨🇦
Process a complete month for a fictional Canadian business.
The goal is no longer “Can you answer this question?” It becomes “Can you actually process this month's bookkeeping?”
🏆 From Learning to Actually Working
Excel skills, messy books, independence and the final simulation.
Excel Starts Getting Smarter 📊
Build Excel skills around actual bookkeeping tasks.
SUM, IF, SUMIF, SUMIFS, COUNTIF, IFERROR, absolute references, tables, filters and sorting.
Make Excel Do Some of the Work ⚡
Reduce repetitive bookkeeping tasks with smarter spreadsheets.
XLOOKUP, VLOOKUP where useful, drop-down lists, data validation and conditional formatting.
Turn a Mess of Numbers Into Something Useful 📈
Use summaries and pivot tables to understand the data.
Answer questions about monthly sales, outstanding balances, expenses, GST/HST and supplier balances.
THE MESSY BOOKS CHALLENGE 🧹
A deliberately messy file. Your job is to clean it up.
Duplicate entries, missing transactions, wrong dates, wrong accounts, incorrect amounts and unreconciled balances.
Forget Perfectly Written Transactions 📄
Work from documents instead of neat textbook questions.
Invoices + receipts + bank transactions + credit-card records + supporting documents. You decide what needs to be recorded.
Reconciliation Day 🔎
Bring every major bookkeeping area together.
Bank, credit cards, customers, suppliers and GST/HST. Check whether everything actually agrees.
COMPLETE CANADIAN BUSINESS SIMULATION 🇨🇦
You receive the business. Then you take over.
You'll receive a fictional Canadian business and its opening information. Then you'll receive the records and do the bookkeeping.
YOU FIND THE PROBLEMS 🕵️
Investigate discrepancies with minimal guidance.
Discrepancies are introduced into the simulation. You investigate them. Help only comes when genuinely needed.
Close the Month 📅
Complete the entire month-end process independently.
Record → Reconcile → Adjust → Check → Finalise
The focus is on how independently you can work.
YOU'RE THE BOOKKEEPER 🏆
The final realistic Canadian bookkeeping challenge.
You'll receive a realistic Canadian business scenario with supporting documents and records. There will be no perfectly organised list telling you what to do next.
You'll be assessed on:
- Accuracy — Are transactions recorded correctly?
- Understanding — Do you know why you're recording them that way?
- Canadian application — Can you handle the Canadian situations we've practised?
- Reconciliation — Can you find differences instead of accepting numbers blindly?
- Excel — Can you organise and work with data efficiently?
- Problem solving — What do you do when information doesn't immediately make sense?
- Independence — Can you look at records and know where to start?
We're building a bookkeeper who knows where to start.
We're not trying to get to lesson 40 and say: “Great, I finished bookkeeping.”
and you think:
“Okay. Let's go through this.”
That is the skill we're building.
Less “memorise this.”
More “here's the situation. What would you do?” 🇨🇦📊