How To Start A Bookkeeping Business 2022 Guide

If you are targeting restaurant owners as bookkeeping clients, perhaps they’re on Instagram instead. Always consider where your target market hangs out before engaging in any social media marketing activities. This chapter will show you a great way how to create a productized service offering and why it’s important when you start an accounting firm.

Many popular accounting software tools offer certification programs to help bookkeepers demonstrate their proficiency with that software. For instance, QuickBooks has QuickBooks ProAdvisor, bookkeeping for small business FreshBooks has FreshBooks Partner Program, and Xero offers Xero Partner Program. In addition, if you have any prior bookkeeping experience, this may be a disadvantage with this course.

Create Internal Policies and Procedures

It’s also helpful to develop a contingency plan in case you’re unable to work for a period of time. Whether this is due to illness or a family matter, it’s incredibly helpful for your brand if you’re able to offer your clients a suitable alternative. Knowing where you eventually want to end up is helpful when you begin planning.

• Bookkeepers can be certified in various financial platforms, such as QuickBooks, or via training programs.
• 1) Head to LinkedIn and type some keywords into the social media search bar that might describe the kind of new clients and business owners you’re looking for.
• Bookkeeping appears in the top 25 on the list of best business jobs available.
• The latter gives you the flexibility to bring in more people in the future.
• Besides yourself, who else will need to be involved in your business?

Since all those starting a cpa firm are different, I won’t be able to provide you with detailed SOP’s here. The best way to help ensure you have a high-quality deliverable is to ensure that you have a strong process around the work you’re delivering if you want to start your own business. It goes without saying that if you’re going to be working online, that you’ll need a solid internet connection. Upgrade your internet plan to something with decent download speeds (100mb/second+). I also use a wired internet connection as opposed to wifi as much as possible.

Step 5: Set Up Your Business Infrastructure

As you’re figuring out your business in the early days, I feel like unless you have a very clear offering and sales processes, that you’ll just end up wasting your money. This can be an accounting problem, a payroll problem, a tax problem, or a financial problem. Impressive content will allow you to seek their attention, demonstrate your expertise, and make an initial connection between you and the prospect. In the business of bookkeeping, connecting with new clients to your business is a lot like making friends or even dating. It doesn’t happen in one day; it can take a couple of meetings before you both trust each other enough to commit to building a relationship. A bookkeeper may be able to prepare some of the tax forms required by Income Tax Services.

If you are familiar with the construction industry, you should focus on this area. You need to know whether this industry requires external bookkeepers or not. You also need to analyze the industry in order to offer value-added services. A bookkeeper’s top responsibility is to keep a chronological list of related debits and credits of a business; which forms part of a ledger of accounts.

The 8 Steps to Start a Bookkeeping Business

This will govern how you pay taxes as a small-business owner, but also what kind of liability protection you have in case something goes wrong and how you’ll structure your business. Choose your business name, make sure someone else isn’t already using it, lest clients get confused. Also, run the name by a few people to see the impression they get of it.

Your marketing plan will justify the need for your business. It will also outline how you plan on reaching new clients in the future. If there’s no viable market for your business, this section will quickly point that out. Speaking of upfront money, buying bookkeeping software is just part of the upfront money you’ll need. If you want to work from home, you’ll need to make sure you have acceptable phone and wireless plans to keep up.

Get the Right Software

Steve has written more than 8,000 articles during his career, focusing on small business, careers, personal finance and health and fitness. Steve also turned his tennis hobby into a career, coaching, writing, running nonprofits and conducting workshops around the globe. While writing your business plan, you’ll decide what you want to charge based on estimated expenses and how much you want to earn.

• And since any disorganization where finance is concerned spells disaster, business owners are always looking for a reliable bookkeeper.
• Once you have your finalists, run the names through your secretary of state’s business name database to make sure it’s available.
• Some virtual bookkeepers also use collaboration tools, accounting software, and bookkeeping software to make work easier.
• If you ever want to get a bank loan for your business, you’ll probably need a more formal business plan.

Look for licensing that will allow you to keep the books for multiple or unlimited companies and consider any needs specific to your industry niche. You will definitely want to check this system out as an option as it’s incredibly popular for bookkeeping businesses and accounting firms. Practice management software is arguably the most important piece of bookkeeping software in your own accounting firm business. You’ll need something that tracks your tasks, deadlines and provides for one central place to communicate on work. When you run a fully virtual bookkeeping business, honestly, there’s not much need for a phone. But when you get bookkeeping clients, you may also need a phone service over and above this, I would recommend setting up a VoIP phone service, which is basically an internet phone service.