Certified Bookkeeper Practice Test
Free Certified Bookkeeper (AIPB) exam practice in English, Chinese, and Spanish — double-entry, adjusting entries, error correction, payroll, inventory, depreciation, and internal controls, with every calculation worked out.
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Practice questions based on the subject areas of the AIPB Certified Bookkeeper designation, US GAAP, and federal payroll practice. Tax rates, wage bases, contribution limits and withholding tables are reset annually and unemployment and wage-and-hour rules differ by state, so no such figure is used as an answer here — where a calculation needs one, the question supplies it. Confirm the rates in effect for your payroll period and your state's requirements before applying anything here to real books. AIPB and Certified Bookkeeper are marks of the American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers; this site is not affiliated with or endorsed by the AIPB.
About the AIPB Certified Bookkeeper exam
The Certified Bookkeeper designation from the American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers is the credential for the person who actually keeps a small business's books, and it sits deliberately below the degree-gated CPA: there is no college requirement, the qualification is experience plus a demonstrated command of the mechanics, and it is national rather than licensed state by state. That combination is why it matters to a bookkeeper who learned the work on the job, and it is why this bank exists in three languages — a very large share of the people running the books for small businesses in the United States do that work in Chinese or Spanish and sit the exam in English. The credential is organized around a handful of subject areas: adjusting entries, error correction, payroll, depreciation, inventory, and internal controls and fraud prevention. This bank follows those areas across six pools rather than five, because error correction and bank reconciliation is a tested subject in its own right and is where working bookkeepers are most often actually tested by reality, and because a fundamentals pool carries the double-entry framework that everything else stands on. Bookkeeping is unusually good ground for a durable question bank. The mechanics have not moved in generations — the accounting equation balances, a transposition error always leaves a difference divisible by nine, FIFO always gives the higher ending inventory when prices are rising, double-declining balance is always twice the straight-line rate applied to book value. What moves is the numbers layered on top: Social Security wage bases, unemployment credit reductions, withholding tables, mileage rates and depreciation ceilings are reset every year, and every state writes its own unemployment and wage-and-hour rules. So no rate, wage base, threshold or dollar limit is ever the keyed answer here. Where a calculation needs one, the question hands it to you in the stem and asks you to apply it — which is exactly what the job is, since a working bookkeeper looks the rate up and then does the arithmetic correctly. Every question appears in English, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish, and every calculation is worked out in the explanation rather than merely asserted.
How to study for the Certified Bookkeeper exam
Start with debits and credits until they are automatic, because every other topic on this exam eventually resolves into one journal entry. Learn the normal balance of each account type and the single rule that governs everything: a debit increases assets and expenses and decreases liabilities, equity and revenue, and a credit does the reverse. Then practice reading a transaction described in plain words and naming the two sides before you look at the options. Pay particular attention to the accounts that behave backwards — accumulated depreciation, the allowance for doubtful accounts, sales returns, purchase discounts and owner draws are all contra accounts, and a contra account carries the opposite normal balance from the account it offsets. If you can look at any account name and say instantly whether a debit raises or lowers it, the fundamentals pool becomes free marks and the adjusting, payroll and inventory pools become much easier, because in each of them the hard part is deciding what happened and the easy part is writing it down.
Learn the adjusting entries as four patterns rather than a list of examples. Every adjustment is one of: cash came in before the revenue was earned, cash went out before the expense was incurred, revenue was earned before cash came in, or the expense was incurred before cash went out. Each pattern always moves one balance-sheet account and one income-statement account, and never touches cash — that fact alone eliminates a great many wrong options. Prepaid insurance and unearned revenue are the same shape seen from opposite sides, and drilling them together is faster than drilling them apart. Then practice the reverse question, which is where this material actually gets tested: given that an adjustment was omitted, say exactly which figures are overstated and which understated on both statements, and by how much. Get comfortable answering that in the abstract — an omitted accrued expense understates expenses and liabilities and so overstates net income and equity — and you can answer it for any adjustment without re-deriving it each time.
Treat error correction and bank reconciliation as the practical heart of the credential, because they are what a working bookkeeper is judged on. Memorize the arithmetic tells, which cost nothing and save enormous time: an out-of-balance difference evenly divisible by nine points to a transposition or a slide, a difference equal to exactly twice some amount points to a posting on the wrong side, and a difference equal to a single amount points to something posted once instead of twice. Just as important is the opposite list — the errors a balanced trial balance can never reveal, including a transaction omitted entirely, an entry posted twice, a debit and credit reversed for equal amounts, a posting to the wrong account of the same type, and two errors that happen to offset. On the reconciliation, sort every reconciling item by two questions in order: does it belong on the bank side or the book side, and does it require a journal entry? Only book-side items — service charges, bank-collected notes, dishonored checks, book errors — ever generate an entry; deposits in transit and outstanding checks never do, because the books were already right.
Finally, split your remaining time between the calculation pools and the judgment pool, because they reward opposite kinds of practice. Payroll, inventory and depreciation are arithmetic under supplied assumptions: work them with a rate given to you, and drill until you can stop Social Security at a stated wage base, build the regular rate including a nondiscretionary bonus, compute cost of goods sold three ways from the same purchases, and produce book value under straight-line, double-declining balance, sum-of-the-years'-digits and units of production without hesitating. Always write the entry as well as the number — payroll in particular is two separate entries, one for gross wages with each employee withholding as its own liability, and a second for the employer's own payroll tax expense, and confusing them is the classic mistake. Internal controls, by contrast, rewards scenario reading. The recurring question describes a small office where one person does too much and asks which duty to move; the answer follows from separating authorization, custody, recordkeeping and reconciliation. Learn each classic scheme paired with the control that catches it — lapping against independent reconciliation of receipts to deposits, ghost employees against an independent payroll review, fictitious vendors against approved vendor lists and supporting documentation — and remember that management override and collusion are the limits no control fully defeats.
FAQ
What is the AIPB Certified Bookkeeper credential, and who is it for?
It is a national credential for working bookkeepers, awarded by the American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers. There is no degree requirement — the designation is built on documented bookkeeping experience plus passing examinations on the core subject areas, together with an agreement to abide by a code of ethical conduct. It is aimed at the person who keeps the books for a small or mid-sized business, a bookkeeping practice serving several clients, or a nonprofit: someone who records transactions, runs payroll, reconciles the bank, closes the month and hands a clean trial balance to whoever prepares the tax return. It is not a license — you do not need it to work as a bookkeeper — but it is the recognized way to prove to an employer or a client that you actually know the mechanics rather than just the software.
How is a bookkeeper different from an accountant or a CPA?
Roughly: the bookkeeper builds the record and the accountant interprets it. A bookkeeper captures transactions as they happen, maintains the ledgers and subsidiary records, runs payroll, reconciles accounts, posts the adjusting entries and produces the trial balance and routine financial statements. An accountant works from that record — analysis, tax positions, audited statements, advising on structure. A CPA is a licensed accountant who has met a state's education, examination and experience requirements and can perform attest work that no one else may sign. The practical consequence for exam preparation is that a bookkeeping exam is far more concerned with the exact entry than with the theory around it: you are asked which account is debited and which is credited, not whether a standard-setter chose well. That is why so much of this bank asks for a specific journal entry.
Why doesn't this practice test ask me to recall tax rates, wage bases, or dollar limits?
Because those figures are reset on a schedule and a bank that keys them goes quietly wrong. The Social Security wage base is indexed annually; withholding tables, mileage rates, retirement contribution limits and depreciation ceilings change; unemployment rates, wage bases and credit reductions differ by state and by employer; and wage-and-hour rules vary from one state to the next. A question whose correct answer is last year's number is not a hard question, it is a wrong one. So every question here that needs such a figure states it in the stem — "assume the rate is 6.2% on wages up to a wage base of X" — and tests whether you can apply it: stop the tax at the base, match the employer share, record each withholding as a separate liability. That is also the real skill. Nobody keeps the current wage base in their head; a competent bookkeeper looks it up and then gets the arithmetic and the entry right. What is durable, and what this bank does key, is the structure underneath: which taxes the employee bears, which the employer bears, which are matched, that Social Security stops at a base while Medicare does not, and what the entries look like.
What is actually tested, and how are the six pools organized?
The subject areas behind the credential are adjusting entries, error correction, payroll, depreciation, inventory, and internal controls and fraud prevention. This bank maps them onto six pools. Bookkeeping Basics and Double-Entry carries the framework — the accounting equation, normal balances, journals and ledgers, subsidiary and control accounts, the trial balance, cash versus accrual, and the entry for common transactions. Adjusting Entries and the Close covers accruals and deferrals, prepaid and unearned items, bad debt under the allowance method, closing entries, and the drill of naming what is misstated when an adjustment is skipped. Error Correction and Bank Reconciliation covers the arithmetic tells, the errors a trial balance can never reveal, correcting entries, and the full reconciliation. Payroll covers gross-to-net, overtime and the regular rate, employee versus contractor, and the separate employee-withholding and employer-tax entries. Inventory and Depreciation covers periodic versus perpetual, FIFO, LIFO and weighted average, inventory errors, and the four book-depreciation methods with disposals. Internal Controls and Fraud Prevention covers segregation of duties, cash controls and petty cash, the fraud triangle, and the specific control that catches each classic scheme.
Do I really need both FIFO and LIFO if my employer only uses one?
Yes, and the reason is the part the exam is actually testing. The methods are not four unrelated procedures to memorize; they are one idea — which costs you assume flowed out — and the whole point is that the choice changes cost of goods sold, ending inventory and reported income even though not a single physical unit moved differently. Once you can state the relationship in the abstract, the questions stop being arithmetic drills: in rising prices FIFO leaves the newest, highest costs in inventory and so reports higher ending inventory and higher income, while LIFO pushes those costs into cost of goods sold and reports the opposite, and in falling prices it reverses. Questions frequently give you the same set of purchases and ask what happens under each, or hand you an ending-inventory error and ask what it does to this year's income and to next year's. That reasoning also transfers directly to depreciation, where the same money is being allocated across periods in different patterns, and to the effect of a missed adjusting entry. It is the single highest-yield idea in the whole subject.