The short answer is yes. The QuickBooks Online ProAdvisor certification costs nothing. Intuit offers it free to anyone with a QuickBooks Online Accountant account, and that account is free too. What you pay for, if anything, is your own time.
How to get it, step by step
- Create a free QuickBooks Online Accountant account at Intuit. You do not need to be an accountant or have clients.
- Open the ProAdvisor tab and start the QuickBooks Online Certification training. The modules cover setup and subscriptions, navigation and settings, list management, the chart of accounts, customers and sales, vendors and purchases, banking and reconciliation, reports, and payroll basics.
- Pass each module quiz and then the final exam with 80 percent or better. You get several attempts, and most modules are not strictly timed.
- Your certification appears in your ProAdvisor profile and on the Find a ProAdvisor directory, which is where many bookkeepers pick up their first clients.
What trips people up
- Reconciliation and bank feeds. Questions ask which action produces which result in the software, not what a reconciliation is in theory. Practice in a sample company.
- Reports. Know which report answers which question, such as where to find unpaid invoices by age or which customers are most profitable.
- Payroll. Even the basic certification touches payroll setup and liabilities.
Is it worth doing?
For bookkeepers, accountants, and anyone offering QuickBooks setup or cleanup, yes. It is free, it takes a weekend or two, and it puts you in Intuit's directory. It is not a substitute for accounting knowledge, and it must be renewed every year as Intuit updates the exam.
Practice first
The exam is open book in the sense that you can work inside QuickBooks while you take it, but you still need to know where things live. Run through the free ProAdvisor practice questions on QuizBuffet by module, then take the real modules in order.