After completing this course, you will be able to:

• Identify all the essential accounting tasks and financial management steps included in the four stages of the Accounting Lifecycle
• Recognize which Accounting Lifecycle stages and steps apply to in-house, independent, and collaborative bookkeeping roles
• Differentiate between the balance sheet, income statement (profit and loss), and cash flow statement and the insights each one provides
• List the steps of a repeatable, streamlined year-end readiness process

What You’ll Learn

• Defining and designing your role as a collaborative bookkeeping professional
• Navigating the Accounting Services Roadmap
• Mapping the Small Business Accounting Workflow from books to taxes
• Managing bookkeeping tasks and taking professional responsibility for the books
• Organizing the chart of accounts and applying the accounting equation
• Managing the books monthly with the Ultimate Accounting Services Checklist
• Balancing the books by reconciling and reviewing balance sheet accounts
• Reading the balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement
• Having financial conversations that count with business owners
• Maintaining the books year-round with KPIs, metrics, and quarterly tax compliance
• Closing the books with a year-end readiness process
• Reflecting on your growth and setting goals for your next step

Long Description

Are you a bookkeeping professional who knows your way around the software but wants to truly understand how to build and articulate the financial data that truly impacts small business sustainability and financial success?

If this is you, then Alicia and Mariette have something special to share!

Imagine completing a full year of bookkeeping where month-end isn’t a mad dash to the finish line, but instead a smooth monthly checkpoint with a detailed step-by-step checklist that will guide you to build and maintain tax-ready, rock solid books year-round.

Imagine a year-end that is no longer a rush to make stressful tax deadlines and instead a streamlined year-end readiness process that provides a clean handoff to the tax professional, who’ll love your work so much they’ll want to send you all their clients for clean books.

This reality is much closer than you think as Alicia and I have collaborated on a special financial literacy cohort specifically for her OWLS bookkeeping community members.

Software skills are essential because they teach where to go and how to get the transactions in. Financial literacy and building a year-round accounting system are what will help you understand the books, explain them to business owners, and stand behind the massive value you bring as a collaborative bookkeeping professional.

Introducing the Accounting Lifecycle Course, a live, step-by-step financial literacy and professional development cohort through the entire accounting services journey, from start to finish.
We’ll take this journey one stage at a time: manage, balance, maintain, and close the small business books with clarity and confidence. With each stage you will learn how to communicate in plain business language and provide the real-time financial insights entrepreneurs can make proactive decisions from and will pay for.

This cohort prioritizes your professional goal and that is why we start with you.

Before we dive into literacy, you’ll define and design the role you want to play as you deliver these accounting services, whether that’s as an in-house bookkeeper, building your own practice, or working alongside another professional.
You’ll use that goal to build an action plan and carry it throughout the entire program.

Then we walk, step-by-step, through the Small Business End-to-End Accounting Lifecycle together which includes:

• Manage rock-solid books monthly
• Balance books beautifully with a detailed audit-proof checklist
• Read and Analyze the financial statements to have the conversations that count
• Maintain solid books so that meaningful insights can be provided year round
• Close the books with the ultimate year-end readiness process

Accounting Lifecycle Course Schedule

Cohort dates: November 10 – December 8, 2026

9 live sessions, 2 hours each (18 hours total)

Tuesdays 9am PT: Nov 10, 17, 24, Dec 1, 8 (Last Day)

Saturdays 9am PT: Nov 14, 21, 28, Dec 5

You will need to spend extra time outside of class to get the action tasks done. Most students find they need 1- 3 additional hours to complete tasks and prepare for the next class. 

Four Tuesday watch-party training sessions with Alicia, which will include timed pauses for exercises and group discussions.

Four Saturday live training + Q&A sessions with Mariette Martinez, ALC instructor.

Final Tuesday Session on December 8th will be Course Closing and Celebration with Mariette and Alicia.

All sessions from 9-11am PACIFC TIME 

Throughout the cohort, Mariette will provide lesson assignments and will stay connected with members inside the Royalwise class forum; most members require 2-4 additional hours to complete action tasks.

Refunds & Cancellations

Please view our Terms of Service, for information on refunds, cancellations, and complaint resolution. To request a refund, please contact us.

Royalwise is registered with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) as a sponsor of continuing professional education on the National Registry of CPE Sponsors. State boards of accountancy have final authority on the acceptance of individual courses for CPE credit. Complaints regarding registered sponsors may be submitted to the National Registry of CPE Sponsors through its website: www.nasbaregistry.org.

Course page updated October 2026