Challenges in delivering the Booking Keeping Topic
Dear participants,
One of the main purposes of this session is to discuss the challenges that you as trainers face as you deliver training in Book Keeping and also to share some good practices in training delivery. I now invite you to give your comments and input on this sub topic. Lets discuss widely as we prepare for the Face to Face seminar.--nkl 12:17, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
Hello Naomy,
A major challenge to delivering entrepreneurship training (Bookkeeping topic inclusive) in my own work experience is that the ‘Skill Acquisition’ aspect of the Training is given more emphasis in the design and delivery of training programmes, while the entrepreneurship training is given very little time i.e. emphasis is placed more on learning a trade or acquiring a skill. As I stated earlier, this may result in the young people having problems managing their businesses, because they did not receive enough training in these vital areas.
Though i have not been involved in book keeping traning, but from my experience as a traniner, using a Case Study is an excellent way to begin any training session. When facilitating any session, a good case study always elicits a lively participatory response. Also asking the audience to prepare and deliver group presentations on the topic can also be very effective.
Hi, Na'omi,
The delivery of the Book-keeping topic will benefit from guided demonstrations, visits to shops or super markets for on-the-spot hands -on and dramatisation .This will surely facilitate the teaching-learning prcess.--Luckyluka 14:22, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
Hi Naomy,
The challenges are; Inadequate knowledge of bookkeeping by the facilitator. Inadequate learning materials. Having a domonstration centre e.g shop or workplace for practical. If the above are made available, teaching bookkeeping will be easier
Ubandoma, It is true that we are somewhat limited by knowledge about bookkeeping and fora such as this one will go a long way to bridge the gap in knowledge about bookkeeping. You give what you have and therefore, we will be equipped to facilitate sessions on bookkeeping after this programme.
Dear Ubandoma
I perfectly agree with you. Possibly professionals or people with accounting background should be employed to handle this all-important topic. What do you think?
SMEs' accounting as pointed out earlier is quiet unique. Your participants are likely to be confused if an accountants should come and use those big terms - debt the receiver, credit the giver". Of course we can train the professional accountant to use and break the accounting language into SMEs' language
Hi Naomy
Most trainers in entrepreneurship do not have the knowledge on book keeping,may be just on the surface and the knowledge shared may not assist an entrepreneur who is in business and is very much struggling in keeping his books of accounts in order,for instance we had an entrepreneurship training for about 30 Youths in May last year 2010 where we invited ZDA to assist us with how to prepare Bankable business plans,apart from ZDA,most of the speakers could not delve into detail when it came to book keeping,this was a big challenge on our part, thanks for this type of training.
Samuel.
Bookkeeping is something that has eluded most educators including facilitators. This also boils down to the culture of record keeping. Personally, I am sometimes involved in bookkeeping process at my work place but is not something that I have ever taught/ facilitated.--Kafuiaheto 18:29, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
Thanks Naomi for your elaborative discussion paper on book keeping and financial management for SMEs in general. Generally I find some challenges on the use of accounting terminology; a simple and customised terminology is very much effective. On the other hand the package of bookkeeping may differ for various level of entrepreneurs like(New and potential entrepreneurs, start-up enterprise and growth and expansion level enterprises) . Before delivering the actual training , if we able to give the participants some practical exposure or relevant enterprise visit , it will help the participants to understand the practicalities’ as they go on the actual theoretical classes.
There are several challenges in delivering training in book keeping. One is that some people have general dislike of working with figures. language can also be a barrier for some partcipants. A Faciliator must therefore take some time to get to know the background of the group he/she is training
one of the challenges that trainers face when delivering book keeping is that, when they are delivering the training they meet different people, some of them have interest while some of them do not have, and some of them have never been to school and never had a chance to learn book keeping, i think that becomes a bit of a challenge for the trainer to deliver the training.
I think the biggest challenge is experience of the trainer and the challenge of simplifying bookkeeping, the ability to overcome the fear of maths. I don't have direct experience in delivering this type of training, but I believe that using simulations and examples from everyday life is the most effective way of training this topic.--Smauye 13:16, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
Ways to simplify teaching of basic accounting is the use of pictorial appeals such as diagrams, charts and role playing.
Basic record keeping should be taught by simple and unsophisticated finance and obviously not the chartered accountant. The difficult in teaching such topics lie with the difficulty in handling numbers. It is a fact most people do not like figures. so getting people to like figures is always a challenge
