Have you any experience in anything close to bookkeeping?
Some of this depends on your personal situation, as I don't know if you are working full-time, part-time, seeking work etc.
To put it simply, get experience through work. Apply for jobs in an accounts department, register with agencies and let them know you're studying and keen to get experience so even junior short-term positions to prove yourself.
Personally I wouldn't suggest trying to work on your own. Maybe BookCert can help on that though, but I haven't seen it and what is involved.
From my own experiences though, having others help show you... having people to ask questions (forums help, but the number of questions you may need to ask if by yourself could be overwhelming) can be invaluable to get the experience to do the job.
Accounting practices may be an option... but they probably someone that can do the job and earn their keep from the start or soon after.
I'd say be prepared to start at the bottom, don't worry about that though as you will be able to move upwards at your own pace... and I have seen people do it quickly.
Hope it helps, but if you have more questions or fill me in a little more on your situation maybe I can be more helpful.
This seems like sound advice. I will be leaving the Armed forces within the next 2 years with no experience just a few qualifications (hopefully. Got ICB level 1 and taking the level 2 in manual bk soon). My current trade offers no equivalent in civvy street so have had to choose a totally different career path. Just wondering what would be the minimum level qualifications for getting a job as a bk in a company?
A lot of companies are not so worried about qualifications, they are worried about experience. Obviously until you get your first job in the field you cannot get experience.
What I did when I left school after GCSE's was got a trainee accountant position for a small firm of accountants, this gave me all round experience - some in bookkeeping as some of the clients wanted bookkeeping doing, trial balances and draft accounts (all this was checked in fine detail by the accountant), it did give me a good amount of experience, then went on to positions doing purchase ledger, sales ledger and all round account positions. It was after 14 years that I set up my own bookkeeping firm (but had the idea of doing this after 10 years but did not have the guts, redundancy 3 weeks before my wedding, and hubby knowing I had been thinking about setting up on my own over 4 years beforehand, told me I was going to set up own business, built me a website, got me a good contact which meant that I was able to set up business and gain a client base, and got a client through newspaper advert straight away, had taken on a temp job so ended up working a few 50 hour weeks until day before my wedding which was not so great.
I did not actually get any qualifications until over a year after I set up my business. Would say that out of potential clients only half of them are worried about qualifications.
I have to agree with Alison regarding qualifications - I have had more around 9-12 enquiries from potential clients and they have all wanted to know about my past experiences with regards to bookkeeping, but only one has asked me if I have any qualifications. Unfortunately I am new to all this so when I started I had no experience or qualifications so I am working on both at the moment.
