Record-Keeping

Training › Small Enterprise training

Records that show how your business is really doing

Money comes in by cash, bank and EcoCash, and at month end you are not sure where it went? Without records you cannot see your profit, control your cash or get a loan. This course sets up simple records for your own business, step by step, with no accounting background needed.

▶▶ Watch the short introduction to the course on YouTube

What you walk away with

• ✔A simple Basic Record Book for cash, bank and mobile money
• ✔Customer accounts that stop money owed going missing
• ✔A monthly Profit and Loss Statement and a Balance Sheet a lender will accept
• ✔An Excel workbook in which the statements fill themselves

See the prices Start the course

Choose how you want to learn

Already have the self-paced course? Add a webinar or a live class on the course page and pay only the difference. Pay by EcoCash or Paynow; the self-paced course opens as soon as your payment is confirmed.

Where two prices are shown, the first is for paid-up Small Enterprise, Medium Enterprise and Corporate members, and the second is for everyone else, including Standard members, Start-up members and non-members. Sending your bookkeeper or cashier? On the course page, choose Buying for your staff?: pay once for as many seats as you need and receive one code per person, which opens the course on their own login. Each certificate carries your business name.

About the course

Set up simple records that show how your business is really doing, and that a lender will accept.

For owners, managers and bookkeepers with no accounting training. You set up a complete, simple system of records for your own business: proof for every dollar, a Basic Record Book for cash, bank and mobile money, accounts for customers on credit, and records of what you owe, your assets, wages, stock, loans and tax. Then you use them: to control your cash every day, to work out your profit every month and to make a Balance Sheet that shows what the business is worth. Adapted for Zimbabwean conditions from the International Labour Organization’s Improve Your Business programme. It is one of the six Improve Your Business modules, each of which can be taken on its own.

Who it is for

• Owners and managers of businesses that are trading and need proper records, whatever records they keep today
• Bookkeepers, cashiers and clerks sent by their employer: the plan is agreed with the employer, and the certificate carries the business name
• Members whose Action Plan includes the Accounting Systems section

What you will do

About 12 hours in all: roughly 5 on screen and 7 setting up and keeping your own records. Most learners finish within two to three weeks.

1. Welcome (30 minutes). Why records matter, and a picture of your business and its records today.
2. Why keep records? (45 minutes). What goes wrong without them, and four ways records improve a business.
3. Which records, and proof for every dollar (1.25 hours). The records your business needs, receipts, the Daily Cash Sales Record and your voucher file.
4. The Basic Record Book (2 hours). Cash, bank and mobile money, sales and costs in one book; then you keep yours for a week.
5. Customers and suppliers on credit (1.25 hours). Customer accounts with limits, collecting what is owed, and what you owe suppliers.
6. Other useful record books (1.75 hours). Asset Register and depreciation, salaries, stock, loans, VAT and other taxes.
7. Paper or computer? (30 minutes). Books or software, carrying balances forward, and keeping your records safe.
8. Use your records: cash, profit and tax (2 hours). The daily cash count, the monthly Profit and Loss Statement, and the tax you owe.
9. What the business is worth (1.25 hours). A Balance Sheet in ten steps, and what a lender reads in it.
10. Your Records Plan (45 minutes). Check your record-keeping practices, write a dated action plan, and send it for review.

What you leave with

• Your Records Plan: your records system, a week of your own Basic Record Book, customer accounts and credit rules, an Asset Register, a Profit and Loss Statement, a Balance Sheet and a dated action plan
• The SMEAZ Record Keeping workbook (Excel), with every record book and a Profit and Loss Statement and Balance Sheet that fill themselves
• A Certificate of Completion when your plan is approved, and a Certificate of Competence once your records system is in use in your business

How the self-paced course works

• Work on your phone or computer, in short sessions. Your answers are saved as you go.
• Every exercise is about your own business, not a textbook case.
• An AI coach comments on your key answers and asks the questions a consultant would ask.
• A SMEAZ consultant reviews your finished work and replies with comments.
• Your certificate carries a number and a QR code that anyone can check on our website.

Ready to start?

Start the course Join the live class list

You will be asked to log in to your SMEAZ website account first. No account yet? Registering is free and takes two minutes.

What comes next

Members who save with the SMEAZ SACCOS can apply for business loans: your records and your savings history are what a lender looks at first. Then put your records to work in Costing and Business Planning, on the Small Enterprise training page.

Questions? Message us on WhatsApp.

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