Great Lakes Bookkeeping Academy is a year-long, hands-on bookkeeping program built to feel like the job, not a course about the job. Instead of videos and quizzes, you step into a simulated company and do the actual work of a full-charge bookkeeper — receiving daily transaction drops by email and voicemail, entering them into your own QuickBooks Online company file, reconciling each month, and closing the books under instructor review.
The program is designed for people who want real, defensible experience before they hang a shingle or apply for a role: career changers moving into bookkeeping, working paralegals and administrative professionals adding a billable skill, and practicing bookkeepers who want to move from data entry into full-charge close work. Three tracks meet you where you are — a free demo waitlist, a self-paced path you can start anytime, and a limited-seat instructor-led cohort paced to a real work week.
The Academy was founded and is operated by Ella, a bookkeeper with more than twenty years in the field. For ten of those years she ran Detroit Girl Friday, a remote bookkeeping firm, and today she owns and operates The Accounting Paralegal. Ella is the instructor behind every email, voicemail, and vendor in the simulation, reviews every student's books by hand, and writes the reference letter you leave with. The Academy is based in Waterford, Michigan and serves students across the Great Lakes region and beyond.