Hi Julie,

welcome to the forum,

the site is full of useful information on all aspects of sertting up.

Rather than regurgetating here information already posted I think thta your best starting point might be using searched on this site through Google.

For the search enter site:www.book-keepers.org.uk -mobile

and then follow it with keywords such as marketing, networking, vistaprint, etc.

Your searches will invariably come back with arguements and debates between site members as these are areas where there is often more than one right answer and you will find yourself falling into one of the camps of thinking. (The two extremes are probably my traditional approach and Bob Harpers alternate accountant approach).

As you do not yet have an ACCA practicing certificate don't foregt that you will be restricting in the services that you can offer by ACCA regulation 8 which effectively prevents you from offering anything beyond bookkeeping to trial balance, VAT and Payroll work unless of course done under the supervision of a qualified accountant which I'm not sure whether that is something that you would want.

Once you've had chance to take in some of the information on the site about finding clients feel free to post with more specific questions,

kindest regards,

Shaun.

There is little to beat word of mouth but to get your name out there I think that networking seems to be the best approach although such seldom has any return within the first six months.

Its one of those things where you have to build up a rapport and realise that you are trying to sell your products to people whose sole reason for being there is to sell their products, not to buy yours.

You may never make a return from those at the network meetings but getting your name (and business cards) out there through them should, fingers crossed see a return on your investment.

HTH,

Shaun.

It was personal recommendation for a new start limited from one of the companies that I work with with my my bankers hat on.

The agency had helped them set up limited then sent them along to a chartered practice who wanted to charge almost £1800 per annum for a very, very basic one man operation (that admitedly had a very good turnover).

In this business word of mouth from whatever source should never be underestimated.

HTH,

Shaun.

JulieS - I think your first decision is are you going to position yourself as a bookkeeper or accountant?

I have not yet met a bookkeeper who has scaled a successful bookkeeping business so would recommend starting off as an accountant.

I assume you can be an accountant if you don't use ACCA letters...is that right?

Next, you need to think about your value proposition and target market. Are you just going to offer data entry bookkeeping? Who specifically are you going to target? Why should they choose you?

Then, before you start I strongly recommend you have some systems and some methodology. You wouldn't do bookkeeping/accounting with software and knowledge of double-entry would you?

Good luck.

Thank you to both Bob ans Shaun! Both contributions are really( and I am not exagerating this) valuable to me.

Unfortunately, Shaun is correct about the ACCA restriction which applies in my case.
I am hoping that, even by offering limited range of accounting services I can still make money.

An Accountant or a bookkeeper? Sometimes small businesses call their accountant a bookkeeper, but they still expect you to prepare management accounts, deal with the VAT and payroll, cash flow, trends, and so on.
Who am I targetting? Small and medium businesses. For contracts in big companies I still have to go through agencies.
On this basis, Bob, what is your advice as to how and where should I advertise?

Regarding the pricing, today I had a call from a small business who wanted me to do some work for them, but they were not prepared to pay £20ph I asked for. I read somewhere in the forum that this is a reasonable rate.
Any thoughts?

Thank you again!

Hi Julie,

unfortunately we are seen as an overhead and as such 10p per hour seems too much for some businesses who cannot link to a rate in their mids the years of study that we have endured in order to offer the services to the quality that we do.

Not so long ago we had someone on the site who worked as a cleaner and a bookkeeper. Nothing against cleaners at all but they were making more per hour cleaning than they were bookkeeping! Considering the comparative knowledge bases there go figure the logic of that one.

In the market place you will find yourself in direct competition against people with bookkeeping qualifications (and often with no qualifications) who set the market price expectation based on basically accepting whatever that they can get in a market place where training companies are churning out hundreds of new bookkeepers per month where there simply isn't enough clients to service them.

That said, any bookkeeper who competes on a price leadership strategy is doomed to failure as there will always be someone ready to undercut so at what stage does one say that this is not worth my while.

Our only option really is differentiation on quality of service but in order to get our names out there we need our clients to be selling us in a catch 22 type of scenario where until you have clients finding them can prove incredibly difficult.

On that front, have you exhausted the usual fronts of family and work colleagues yet? (without poaching of course).

£20 p.h is a good rate where one needs to use hourly charging as a basis... However, what does the client want? If they are basically looking for a data entry clerk then they will have been thinking of no more than £8 per hour for a bookkeeper.

If they want someone who knows what they are doing then £15+ is reasonable.

My own charge rate is £17 (plus VAT) for bookkeeping work and £35 (plus VAT) for accounts and related work. I also quote fixed prices but base my time on an expectation of at least the bookkeeping or accounting rates dependant upon the task at hand (so some work comes in at considerably more than £35 per hour spent working on it).

Being VAT registered does seem to restrict my client base but then, how much do I really want businesses that are too small to be VAT registered?

I appreciate that puts me on a collision course with larger practices than mine but I have a background that makes me comfortable playing in that arena.

I do occassionally accept lower loss leader rates for short term gigs if a role gives me the opportunity to pick up something that I may need in the future.

Of course one needs to factor into that the area that you are marketing your services in combined with competition rates.

Hope that something in the above helps,

kind regards,

Shaun.

BobHarper wrote:

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even though ACCA is an excellent qualification I'd recommend going for the later option and going down AAT route.

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words spoken very easily by those who haven't gone through the ACCA qualification.

Bob if you do not have a practicing certificate then you cannot use the letters ACCA at all in self employment. They are only of any use in finding employment including contract roles so your option (1) is flawed.

For option (2) Can I refer you back again to Julies original post where she states that she works as a contract accountant. To play in that territory you really need ACCA, CIMA or an ACA qualification.

AAT is an accounting technican qualification and an excellent stepping stone into accountancy which also retains one foot in the bookkeeping camp... but, in itself Julie would have real difficulty finding positions at the level I assume that she currently is on the back of the AAT qualification.

Also, worth mentioning of course is that if ever anyone (not Julie who should not consider that route) were to drop ACCA for an alternative qualification which is less restrictive then IFA or AIA should be considered before AAT (and of those IFA now being recognised by IFAC gives it pole position).

Thank you Shaun, yes, this is all very useful information.

Unfortunately, I don't have any one among close circle who needs my accounting services.

This is why I had to advertise and wait for phone calls.

Getting the price right is proving to be a difficult task.

Sorry, Bob, I did not understand what you meant by value pricing? If not by hour how to price your services?

When I worked for practices they all charged clients for the number of hours spent on their accounts.

Shamus wrote:

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Hi Julie,

think of the price of perfect information that you will have done at P5 (if you took that option) and it's very similar to that.

Bob confussed us a little until he gave an example and I could relate back to one of the pricing strategies from the ACCA syllabus.

Have a read of this thread :

http://www.book-keepers.org.uk/t49848510/business-plan-for-startup-bookkeeping-service/

You might also find that thread useful reading as it gives a little insght into various members pricing strategies.

hth,

Shaun.

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 Sorry, Shaun, I did take P5, but still can't the idea. I would appreciate if you could elaborate on this a little more. Thank you so much!

BobHarper wrote:

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Julie - value pricing is where you agree a price based on what the client gets, not how long it takes you.

When you do this you search for value which makes you focussed on what clients really want.

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 Thank you Bob. In another words charge each client differently depending on their needs and wants, right?

My problem is that I don't have any experience of negotiating prices. I would like to work out a charge that would be fair to me and not too costly to potential clients and put them off for this reason.

How do you negotiate with a new client?