Pitman Training

Understanding Business Accounts

Course Outline

For a business, nothing is more important than its finances. This course will provide you with a good understanding of business accounts – essential knowledge if you run a small business; are considering setting one up or need to learn more about company accounts for your current or future role.

This course – designed to help you understand the principles of business accountancy – also covers part of the syllabus for the ITEC Business Competence Level 3 unit qualification.

Comprising five lessons, our business accounts training is designed to help you understand balance sheets, profit and loss (P&L) accounts including stock-taking, depreciation, capital and revenue expenditure. You will also learn about accruals and the role of capital and reserves. The final lesson considers profit margins, analysing a profit and loss account and how to make comparisons on financial statements.

This is a fully flexible self-study programme, which means you can organise your training around your existing work and home commitments. There’s also a course advisor on hand to help out when you need it.

Once you’ve completed your training in understanding business accounting, you’ll have completed a workbook to keep as a handy reference guide and will be entitled to feature the prestigious Pitman Training name on your CV.

Should you wish to progress your learning further, you could consider Costing and Pricing, or one of our many diplomas, which have the potential to transform your skills and career.


The aim of this course is to fully understand the two most commonly used financial statements in business – a balance sheet and a profit & loss account.

Those who wish to start their own business, those looking for work as well as employees who wish to learn more about how to understand business accounts.

There are five lessons in this course: –

Lesson One: Fixed and current assets, debtors and creditors, the accounting equation. capital and reserves, the purpose and layout of a balance sheet

Lesson Two: The purpose of a profit and loss account, the importance of stock-taking, depreciation, capital and revenue expenditure.

Lesson Three: Accruals, provisions, prepayments, the role of capital and reserves.

Lesson Four: The importance of the profit and loss account, calculating profit at various levels.

Lesson Five: The meaning of profit margins, making comparisons on financial statements, analysing a profit and loss account.

This course should take around 10 to 12 hours to complete.

Our Understanding Business Accounts course is part of our distance learning range – which can be accessed online via our distance learning portal. 

This means that you have the flexibility to study our Understanding Business Accounts course:

  • In centre, with our friendly course advisors available for support and guidance as and when you need it.
  • At home or from work – with support via email or telephone during working hours.
  • On a blended mix – in-centre for the modules you need help with, at home or from work for those you are gliding through.

Once you’ve decided to go ahead, all you’ll need to do is contact your nearest Pitman Training centre that offers and supports our distance learning platform, and they will arrange for you to have an induction to show you around the system and talk you through how our online training works. After this, you can learn in your own time and at your own speed, but with the knowledge you have support at hand if required. 

To find your nearest centre that offers and supports our online Understanding Business Accounts Training, /training-a-z/”>


The best way to make sure your training programme suits you, your skills, your ambitions and your busy schedule, is to get in touch with us for a free, friendly expert career consultation.

Enquire Now