What is the Best Way to Study Accounting?

Q: What is the best way to study accounting?

A: I actually published an article on this subject a while back in one of our old newsletters. Here it is again, it's called Why You Shouldn’t Memorize Debits & Credits. The article includes what you should not do (don't memorize) and also the best way to study accounting.

Basically the best way to study accounting is:

1. Know the Basic Accounting Equation,
2. Know what the 5 elements of accounting are and how they affect this equation,
3. Know how debits and credits relate to the accounting equation.
4. Learn and understand the 10 Basic Accounting Journal Entries.

That's it.

Those 4 items are covered in the first 3 chapters on this site (Basic Concepts, Basic Transactions and Double Entry Accounting).

Once you've studied and understand these 4 things, you can pretty much work out any debit and credit journal entry, and that is most of the work in the subject.

Of course, you should also understand T-accounts, the trial balance and all the financial statements in order to truly excel at accounting. But having a solid understanding of debits and credits and doing journal entries is most of the work in the subject and underpins all these things.

I also highly recommend a specific study system which will empower you to study accounting and many other subjects like a real champ. It's called Study Technology. It's not silly memory tricks or some quick solution that doesn't really do anything. It's a professional study system that will get you studying in the correct way and will reduce the need to memorize things to an absolute minimum. In my opinion it's totally revolutionary. And the best thing is you can use it with any subject, not just accounting. I used it myself to get top grades in accounting, and I continue to use it today when doing research and studying other subjects.

What do you think? What's the best way you've found for studying accounting? Leave your comment further below.

Best,
Michael Celender
Founder of Accounting Basics for Students


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