Hi, sorry for the number of questions that are likely to spill forth.
As stated in my one other post, I'm considering taking a giant leap and setting up for myself. I currently work in the public sector and have 2 small children so would like to use my expertise to be my own boss and be available to my children before and after school.
I'm in the research stages at the moment and want to ensure I have thought of everything before I take my running jump.
I've looked at pricing structures and following a post I read this morning re fixed fees am going to revisit my original thoughts, I had fixed fees for everything but bookkeeping so have some new thoughts on that.
My target market will be small / medium size businesses offering payroll / bookkeeping and filing statutory accounts, at first anyway.
I want to earn in the region of £30k after tax, anything more is a bonus, and eventually, being the personality that I am, £30k will not be enough, but that is my initial aim.
One of my questions is, depending clearly on the casemix of clients, how many would you need for this to happen? (I appreciate this is variable, but a guestimate to see if I'm living in cloud cuckoo land or not would be very helpful).
Re my pricing structures, I originally intended to charge a fixed fee for filing statutory accounts (£700) a fixed annual fee for payrol (£50) + a charge per employee at £4 per month and then £17.5 per hour for bookkeeping services including CIS / VAT. After reading the article this morning I see that it would be better not to charge per hour, so based on the set of books I keep at present, there are approximately 15-20 transactions per month, 1 employee (the director), 1-2 subcontractors and VAT returns. This takes a few hours per month so as a basis £630 per year (£17.5*3*12). I could then increase charges depending on the number of transactions for each individual client at £1 per transaction per month say? and for every additional contractor, charge at the per employee rate.
As fixed prices are recommended, the client wouldn't see this detail, but does it seem like a fair charging mechanism or am I way off the mark? (I'm in North Yorkshire, as I know prices differ region to region).
Your honest opinions would be appreciated, as if I am going to take on this new venture, I want to do it right.
Welcome to the forum. I love fixed prices. I have charged this way for a long time no and no one has ever asked me to break the price down to the hours I work. Rather than reinvent the wheel, i'll direct you to a few blogs I have written about this:
