What sort of clients need bookkeeping on a regular basis, but will allow it to be done off-site (not in their own office)?
The potential clients I meet are almost all individuals who need bookkeeping only once a year, or businesses that need regular bookkeeping but won't let the books out of their office.
I'd like to find businesses large enough to provide regular work, but not so large the bookkeeping needs to be done on-site.
Where should I be looking?
-- Edited by TMe668 on Wednesday 13th of January 2016 04:36:25 PM
Since I've converted many of my clients to QuickBooks Online, from QuickBooks Desktop version, I've been able to take much more of the work to my office rather than on clients premises.
I have a Bookshop/Cafe business, 2 x Pub/Restaurants, 2 Cleaning businesses, a Builder, a Village Shop, a Garden Landscapers, a small manufacturing factory and more - all of which I carry out in my office.
I hope that gives you some ideas...........
Carol
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Carol Saunders Lady of Ledger Book Keeping Telford, Shropshire
Most of my clients are off site. They are from a variety of trades (builders, Personal trainers, cafe, etc) they like working remotely and they either post me their receipts or use something like receiptbank to add them to the software.
I do have clients I go and see and I have to say I enjoy working at their sites, gets me out of the house and its nice to feel part of the team. I wouldn't want all of my work to be remote but even the ones I visit on site use cloud based software so I can keep a check on things when I am not in the office. I go in to process invoices etc
There are lots of different clients out there many of whom will be happy to work with you remotely. Its just finding them that can be tricky to start with.
Good luck
When I began my business, all my clients were small individuals who only required year end work. I never regret taking them on as 10 years later most of them are still with me and the business they have created for me in terms of word of mouth is priceless.
If there is a particular area that you have experience or particular interest in it is worth trying to specialise. I live in a rural area and many of my full time clients are farms or businesses with an agricultural interest. I have made myself known locally so have not had to advertise for new work for years. They fully understand and appreciate that I only work from home as I have young children. I visit to collect paperwork or they drop it off and I have found they appreciate not having to travel to visit large accountancy firms.
Other businesses worth approaching are small garages, shops, hairdressers, taxi firms etc. I have turned down work in the past where I was expected on site. I look at this as being the same as turning down work for being unhappy with any other element. The best clients will work with you.
Stick at it and best of luck
Valerie
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Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
talking of farms. One of mine presented me with a huge 18th century ledger all beautifully written out by hand. Not at all the sort of thing that you expect to be given when collecting the books.
When they closed the business (retirement) they allowed me to keep the ledger as they knew that I absolutely loved it.
Hi Timothy,
The bulk of my current clients are service busnesses who want annual or quarterly attention. I think that its the word of mouth effect in that people tend to hang around with people in similar trades so you end up with a certain focus.
For regular bookkeeping clients try calling up people offering full time employment for part time roles and explain the benefits of keeping people off payroll. You may still need to attend their sites quite a lot but you will often find you are also able to work from home.
My feeling is that finding clients who require regular distance bookkeeping work without going to their premises is quite rare (common enough with annual jobs though).
If you think about it, what would you be doing for the client where you are reducing their workload if they have to spend time scanning in their paperwork? Collection from site is one thing but less common (but not unknown) to have a purely off site / no face to face contact arrangements which seems to be what you are going for.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
I think the key to this is finding clients who are vat registered but without big or suitable premises. This way they need bookkeeping on a quarterly basis at the very least. If I look through my clients who are VAT registered I have around 25 or so different sectors all who drop their paperwork off to me. There is no doubt that some of these come to me as I offer a final accounts solution, i.e. I am their accountant but most would not have a problem having a separate bookkeeper, you just need to talk to them before they appoint an accountant who also does bookkeeping. In all honesty a lot of accountants don't really want the bookkeeping type of work.
I think, as Alison alludes to, that cloud accounting will become more relevant, I know of a few bookkeepers who have set their businesses up on the back of Xero and charge top money too. If I was younger and starting up that would be the way I would go without a doubt. Twenty years ago if you were an expert in Sage you could get work easily (all the training companies offered certificates in Sage) but I think the tide is changing (definitely against Sage) and the cloud is taking over and of those that are out there, Xero seems to be the most popular.
I definitely see the logic in aiming for VAT registered clients.
If one is to aim towards working with purely sole traders, to provide a reasonable living wage, after expenses and taxation, what sort of quantity of clients are we talking?
Let's say, Non registered for VAT, how often do you see, or complete any work for these guys? Once a year? What do you charge? An average plumber for example, non VAT. (I know that's a, how long is a piece of string sort of question)
From the above example, I'm guessing anywhere between 300-500 pa / One off payment.
That's a fair amount of clients to make 30k Gross.
So is it fair to say, that without LTD clients, it's a part time wage for full time CPD?
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Johnny - Owner of an overly-active keyboard.
A man who can read, yet doesn't, is in no way wiser than a man who can't.
In answer to the OP.
From reading between the lines of your question, I could be totally wrong, and reading a different thread lol.
Confidence grows. It's all about confidence.
If I'm wrong, ignore, and forgive :)
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Johnny - Owner of an overly-active keyboard.
A man who can read, yet doesn't, is in no way wiser than a man who can't.
John, I think if you were looking at non vat registered clients you would need to be offering an accounts and tax return service and see them once a year. These guys are pretty much compliance driven so largely won't be looking for a regular bookkeeping service. Your plumber example isn't too far off the mark but of course depends on how much work needs to be done. If the plumber works under CIS then the whole job can be completed in next to know time and a charge of around £200 might be ok, however if it's messy and (s)he does a bunch of domestic work and goes to the plumbers merchant every couple of hours for parts costing 27 pence and the receipts are faded or covered in melted Mars bar and stink of old fags, then that may be a £600 job. These are still great jobs, you might do the first job in an hour so the rate is great, whereas the second may take a day with plenty of questions centred around missing information.
For bookkeeping I would stick with the VAT registered clients all day long. I'm one for quoting fixed fees as they invariably work out better than an hourly rate, one of my smallest clients has a van and does a bit of delivery. I charge him £55 plus vat per month. He brings the work in quarterly and my bookkeeper will get the job finished in two hours top. I guess if you had 50 clients like that you would be getting close to where you want to be, working around 30 hours per month...seems ok when you look at it like that!
Just to clarify, I have a friend who is extremely busy during a few months of the year, and then has almost no bookkeeping work for the rest of the year. Almost all his clients need him only at year-end.
Most other bookkeepers I've met are employees who have regular fulltime or part-time jobs and do some freelancing on the side, mostly at year-end.
I know there are bookkeeping services with multiple employees who manage to stay busy all year round, but I haven't been able to speak with anyone who runs a business like that. I was curious what sort of clients they have, who need year-round bookkeeping, but don't keep the books "in-house".
I suspect they started with year-end clients and took some years to find enough year-round clients to turn freelancing into a fulltime job.
Thanks Rob. In regards to the cloud....which will replace desktop apps before long, as everyone from the age of five, upto 95 nowadays is tech savvy, well almost... Is it fair to say that any guy or gal with a smart phone is able to replace the bookkeeper of their business? No offence at all to bookkeepers. Tech now is amazing for sure. Now, as beautiful as every java, ruby and every other platforms are, excluding flash... how accurate can the user input be? Are all these details checked over by the bookkeeper/tax advisor/Accountant against invoices at year end? Have I completely misunderstood the cloud? I definitely see the value, but is the accuracy there?
Thanks
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Johnny - Owner of an overly-active keyboard.
A man who can read, yet doesn't, is in no way wiser than a man who can't.
For instance, I go to pc world, I stick through a invoice for 300, I say it's for a cheap laptop, when in effect it's for a playstation 4. Can all these be policed. We know the ultimate onus is on those who sign the tax forms. I must be missing something with the cloud
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Johnny - Owner of an overly-active keyboard.
A man who can read, yet doesn't, is in no way wiser than a man who can't.
Tim, I've just noticed you're in Canada. Not sure how much of a difference that makes but considering the vastness of your country perhaps you need to embrace technology so distance isn't so much an issue? But you are right it takes time to build your client base but I think all of us on this site probably had a standing start so it is possible. the good thing is that virtually all clients will stick with you year after year. If you are full time you will build the business more quickly but if you are happy to just do a few along a full time job then that may be a good resolution.
John I'm not a cloud user myself, there are a few of us old fogies on here who aren't keen for different reasons but I think it will be an easy 'sell' to clients. The main attraction appears to be the bank feeds, with a bit of jiggery pokery you can get the program to allocate receipts and payments to the right place and reconciling the bank is a doddle. This saves a lot of time. I am always wary at how much input a client has in their bookkeeping as it can take longer to unravel a bad job than it takes to do right first time. I think you would suggest to clients that they may wish to produce their sales invoices with the accounting software and maybe enter the purchase invoices and you could tidy things up on a monthly basis, perhaps send them some basic management accounts. All good value and timely information for the client.
Part of your monthly routine might be to look at all transactions above a certain figure as an absolute minimum to verify the postings are correct. Don't forget that the government want to introduce quarterly submissions in the not too distant future. Cloud accounting is probably perfect for that and what a great opportunity for bookkeepers!
Tim, I've just noticed you're in Canada. Not sure how much of a difference...
As far as I can tell, there isn't a speck of difference except for some of the terminology, and we tend to use QuickBooks rather than Sage. Canada looks huge on a map, but it's actually a collection of fair sized cities with virtually nothing in between. There are about 3.5 million people within commuting distance of my house, so it's not like I'm in the hinterland.
Do you have a VAT equivalent? I.e a tax that needs to be accounted for and generally paid on a more regular basis than annually. If so I think that's your market. Get in the car and meet as many of those 3.5 million as you can!
have you thought about offering a payroll service as thats monthly and generally doesn't require for you to be on site.
Just a thought for something to fill in gaps so that even for annual clients you get a regular income.
I was chatting with an American bookkeeper the other day and she was telling me that over there bookkeeping and payroll are generally processed by seperate businesses so if thats the same in Canada it may be a non starter.... Or may prompt you to also open a serperate payroll business.
If you do I hope that your Governments not playing silly games with your payroll the way that our's is in the UK. It's a full time job over here trying to keep up with the changes!
kindest regards,
Shaun.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Do you have a VAT equivalent? I.e a tax that needs to be accounted for and generally paid on a more regular basis than annually. If so I think that's your market. Get in the car and meet as many of those 3.5 million as you can!
We have VAT (by a different name) and your suggestion to target small businesses that need quarterly remittance makes sense.
The question is... what types of businesses (in what industries) are most likely to fit that description?
To illustrate, most of my contacts are in the building industry. They tend to be very small (e.g. a plumber who needs his books done once a year) or quite large (e.g. a home builder who needs in-house bookkeeping). So I have individuals wanting help at year-end, and companies that want me to come on board as a fulltime employee, but not much in the middle.
