He has always worked in finance and is currently head of finance for a company. He is hoping to start leading up to retirement and wants to do some book keeping from home, He is getting relevant qualifications at the moment and maybe in 6 months or a year he will be starting to look for clients,
He wants to start looking at what his potential market might be and wondered as he has experience of doing my books whether the Art/Craft market would be an area to look at for future clients? So if you wouldn’t mind could you give him / us a bit of an insight into what you may be looking for, for example;
As a small business what sort of services would you want a book keeper to deal with?
Would you want to be able to see the person dealing with your books or would doing it by post be a good way to go?
A set fee for the year or an hourly rate?
What would be most important for you when looking for a book keeper, qualifications or experience?
We are in the very early stages of looking into this so any advice would be great
All the best with the new venture. I think hubby will need to think about his target market carefully and maybe set out a pricing plan, having a mix of small to medium size business might be a good idea, does he have specialist sector he knows more about and could target maybe ?
Many years ago I was in accounting, (now a web developer / artist) and was freelance for xx years, I did have a specialist sector but also various small clients from other businesses but I only did local clients (up to 15 miles) so I could visit them and either collect there books or work onsite depending on their preference, as Sara says not everyone would be happy to send things in the post.
Obviously having a website will be an advantage too, good way to advertise and work online with clients - back when I was doing it we didn’t have broadband - wasn’t dialup slow !!! That was a long time ago !!
It’s a great way to be your boss, I loved it at the time but can also mean long hours when deadlines etc are due… I love my web business now but oh to be a full time artist lol
Thanks, Hazel, very useful, He does have a specialism and he will target those, but it is so specialist it probably won’t be any good, especially as it usually very large companies, working in that industry rather than small businesses.
It maybe worth advertising the fact of the specialist sector as well as others - I found one fed off the other
I gave up the accounting in 2000 ( only do ours now) to focus on the web design side as I had been doing both for a few years, it’s amazing how one thing can lead to another, accounting clients became web and design clients … My head was finance but my heart arty and so they crossed over once people know you have other skills etc
Hope it works out for Mr W sounds like a good plan for retiring early
Hi
I would be looking for a fixed price to do my year end accounts, I wouldnt post but do use drop box to share paperwork etc. Other cloud based storage seems to be a little pricey.
I don’t have a problem with book keeping as such as both my businesses (craft and chiropody) don’t really have any complicated transactions - just money in and (usually more) money out! I do however hate filling in my tax return, what to put in which box and trying to work out allowances for home use etc so would happily pay someone to do that for me. I would prefer a fixed price so I can budget for it.
