Developing entrepreneurial accounting and finance competency using the ELLEIEC Virtual Centre for Enterprise

This paper explores the development of one of the essential competences of the entrepreneur, that of being able to understand accounting and finance. The paper starts by considering the generic competences of the entrepreneur and the role accounting and finance plays, it then describes how the competence is developed in the ELLEIEC Virtual Centre for Enterprise (VCE). The ELLEIEC VCE is a multilingual virtual learning environment aimed at students wishing to explore starting their own business. It also provides modules that Higher Education Institutions can use as European Credit bearing modules within their own programmes. The ELLEIEC VCE is still under development but already contains a number of full modules and has been trialed by 43 students and teachers across Europe. This paper concludes with some comments made by students after they have used the Accounting and Finance modules; and a summary of the ongoing developmental activities in the VCE.