You give them between £5,250 and £21,000 in order to get a five year licence for an exclusive territory to operate their franchise.

For a full list of benefits refer to http://www.bookkeepingfranchise.co.uk/new-packages.asp

If you think that the investment plus any interest that this will either incur or be lost by taking the franchise up will provide a difference in income more than that which you would gave been able to earn going solo. And you are willing to take the risk of the Franchise operator folding (who can forget Athena!) then the Franchise is worth it.

I think that generally with franchises they're only worth considering buying into if (1) the name is well known and (2) you are confident that the services that they bring in will be more profitable than had you not used them.

Others that you may consider looking at are Tax Assist Direct, Certax, Crunchers, etc. Look at the BFA website and there are lots of hopeful companies eager to gain new franchisee's. What you also need to ask yourself of course is what do they make more money from, their services or selling franchises!

Franchising works for some people and there are some quite legitimate companies using the franchise model, however it is not for me but that's just because I'm too mean to pay anyone else for me to do work that I would have been doing anyway without them and I'm also probably a little over confident in what I can do without anyone elses help.

Good luck in whatever path you decide is right for you though Peter.

Shaun.