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Bookkeeping for Small Businesses

Know exactly where your money goes so 'plenty sales, no profit' stops happening to you.

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About this course

Learn practical bookkeeping for a real Nigerian small business — recording every naira in and out, separating personal from business money, telling cash apart from profit, and building a simple cashbook in a notebook and in Google Sheets. By the end you can run a clean one-month record system, read your own profit and loss, price to actually profit, and earn money keeping books for traders, artisans and vendors who badly need it.

'I dey sell every day, but where is the money?' is the most common cry in Nigerian small business — and it almost never means bad luck. It means no records, so money leaks in ten small ways you can't see. Bookkeeping is simply the habit that makes the truth stop hiding.

What you'll learn

Course syllabus — 7 lessons

  1. Why 'plenty sales, no money' happens — what bookkeeping really is12 min
  2. Record everything: every income and every expense, the same day13 min
  3. Separate your money: business money is not your money12 min
  4. Cash vs profit: why your account is empty but you 'made money'13 min
  5. Receipts, invoices and the paper that proves your money12 min
  6. Build your cashbook — in a notebook and in Google Sheets15 min
  7. The routine, reconciling, reading your P&L, and pricing to profit15 min

Your project

Set up and run a one-month bookkeeping system

A shareable link to your one-month bookkeeping system (a Google Sheet set to Viewer access, OR compiled photos/PDF of your notebook cashbook), including the running cashbook, the reconciliation, the month's profit-and-loss with a cashflow note, and your written summary.

Certificates on Skillnaija are earned, not issued for attendance: you submit this project, it is graded against a rubric, and passing issues a certificate anyone can verify.

Frequently asked questions

Is Bookkeeping for Small Businesses free?

Yes. Bookkeeping for Small Businesses is completely free on Skillnaija. You need a free account to open the lessons, and there is no charge for the course, the project, or the certificate.

How long does Bookkeeping for Small Businesses take to complete?

5 weeks · ~4 hrs/week. There are 7 lessons, about 2 hours of material in total. You learn at your own pace and your progress is saved.

Do I need any experience to start Bookkeeping for Small Businesses?

Beginner-friendly. You can start from scratch — no prior experience is assumed.

What will I learn in Bookkeeping for Small Businesses?

You will build practical skills in Recording income and expenses, Separating personal and business money, Cash vs profit thinking, Building a cashbook in a notebook and Google Sheets, Reading a simple profit & loss and cashflow, Pricing to profit, Record-keeping & MSME tax basics. Every lesson is written for a Nigerian context, with examples drawn from how the work is actually done and paid for here.

Do I get a certificate for Bookkeeping for Small Businesses?

Yes, but it has to be earned. You complete the course project — Set up and run a one-month bookkeeping system and submit it for grading. Passing the project issues a verifiable certificate; finishing the lessons alone does not.

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Ready to start Bookkeeping for Small Businesses?

It's free, it's self-paced, and it ends with something you can show an employer.

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