About Us

My name is Michael Celender. I am the creator of this site. I'm the guy on the left.

I created this site in order to help people of all ages and backgrounds who were having difficulty studying accounting.

I first studied accounting when starting university a number of years ago. I chose to study and major in accounting as I was told by my accounting friends (some of whom are pictured in this photo) that if you become a chartered accountant you can make a lot of money. [Justin, who is to the right of me in the picture, and Gary, who is right next to him, both became chartered accountants. Dan is the guy on the extreme right - he studied actuarial science and now lectures economics.]

Anyway, the only problem I had when choosing to study accounting was that I had never studied the subject before. And a friend also warned me how they teach all 5 years of high school accounting within the first 6 months at university.

Those first few months were a lot of work.

Thankfully I had a great study system to make sure I really understood the subject.

And so by the end of 1st-year I was averaging around 80% for accounting, better than many people who had studied it throughout high school.

But I learnt first-hand how difficult it can be studying accounting at college or university level, especially when you had never done it before...

I found that each of these 1st-year students were running into many of the same problems I did. I found that each of them had many similar misunderstood words and concepts in the subject, one person to the next. Based on my own personal experience as an accounting student, and based also on the difficulties I saw these accounting newbies having, I developed a set series of basic accounting lessons to supplement (and sometimes replace) their textbooks.

The lessons were simple. Unlike accounting textbooks, they had illustrations, and they had a logical order.

These published lessons of mine proved successful. The students were doing much better. The only problem was that my students were not returning - they were finding they could now keep studying accounts on their own - and many were now passing and didn't need any more help ever again!

Then, somewhere around the time that I finished my degree I was unexpectedly contacted by a professor who asked me to put together a full 2nd-year accounting exam. I took him up on this and crafted what would be my very first official (and paying) accounting publication.

Fast-forward another 3 or 4 years and I was now the proud author of several accounting courses and publications, including training and educational materials on South African government accounting and two online courses published by a major media corporation. I also lectured in accounting and related subjects during this time.

Around this time I decided to also put together all the set series of lessons I was teaching to my first-year students in a pack. Simple lessons. This became my very own book on basic accounting.

This site is also my final tribute to accountancy as a subject - and a tribute to accounting students worldwide.

Yes, you heard right - final tribute. You see, after over 600 hours of one-on-one accounting tutoring, and after working as an accountant and administrator in a few positions since university, I decided that daily accounting work was not for me...

Funny how life works, hey?

Now, instead of tutoring students one-on-one myself, I can finally replace myself with a robotic version of me - not with another tutor - but with this site... I figured that students can use this site to teach themselves accounting...

Who knows what will be next?

I hope you enjoy this site.

I hope it helps with your studies.

I truly hope it gives you a much better understanding of the subject and sets you up for your future, whatever that is.

Wishing you the very best for the future,

Michael Celender


P.S. I welcome comments, feedback and recommendations on this site... Feel free to contact me using the form below.