Learning accounting and tax preparation with Pop Books

# Learning accounting and tax preparation with Pop Books

The Education edition lets you learn with the real program, on your own or in a class. Everything you do is practice work. Nothing in it can be mistaken for a real return.

Practice work is always marked

• A coloured Practice bar stays at the top of every screen.
• Printed returns, filing packages and reports say PRACTICE — NOT FOR FILING on every page, with a large diagonal mark behind the text.
• A practice filing package says "This is a practice return. Do not mail or upload it." and has no mailing address.
• Taxpayer numbers must be obviously made up. Pop Books refuses a number that could be real, and says which forms it accepts.
• A company started as practice stays practice, even if the file is opened later with a different licence.

### Made-up numbers you can use

• United States Social Security or individual taxpayer number: nine digits with 00 in the middle, such as 912-00-3456. No real number has 00 in the middle.
• United States employer number: starts with 00, such as 00-1234567.
• Canada social insurance number: nine digits that start with 0.
• India PAN: five letters, then 0000, then one letter, such as ABCDE0000F.
• India Aadhaar number: twelve digits that start with 0 or 1.

Take a lesson

1. Open Learn from the menu. The course is a list of modules. Each lesson shows how many tasks you have finished.
2. Open a lesson. Read the objectives and the explanation in plain words.
3. Make a new practice company, then choose Start. The lesson builds the company for you: the accounts, the opening balances and the papers you will record.
4. Record each paper in the lesson, the way you would for a real business.
5. Choose Check on a task. The check does not only say wrong. It tells you which account is off and by how much, or which line of the return differs and by how much.
6. Choose Hint if you are stuck. Each press gives a bigger hint. The last hint gives the answer.

Start over

Reset clears your marks, your check count and your hints. It does not remove the entries you made, because a company never loses its history. To do a lesson again from the beginning, make a new practice company and start the lesson there.

Lessons that are ready, and lessons that are outlined

Ready now: double-entry basics, the chart of accounts, sales and invoices, bills and expenses, year-end and tax lines, and a United States personal return with Schedule C. Bank reconciliation, month-end close, Canada GST/HST and India GST are outlined and will open when their practice material is finished.

The lessons teach how the books and the forms connect. They are not tax advice, and the practice return does not work out every part of a real return.

Assignments from your instructor

1. Your instructor gives you a file that ends in .psbassign.
2. Make a new practice company. Choose Import assignment, pick the file and type your name as your instructor knows it.
3. Record the papers listed in the assignment. The answer key is locked inside the file, so you cannot check your work against it here. Your instructor checks it.
4. When you are done, choose Export submission. Send the file that ends in .psbsubmission to your instructor.

The submission is signed by your computer. If anyone changes it afterwards, it stops working. If you change your books, export again; only your latest submission is graded.