My plans to relaunch my business haven't come to anything for various reasons, and life is still getting in the way. I need to start earning some money, but I'm not in a position to take on regular clients at the moment.
I'm wondering if offering a service to accountants, book-keepers and maybe businesses, turning shoeboxes and carrier bags of paperwork into a decent set of ledgers with a P&L and balance sheet, might be viable. My client can make final adjustments and deal with the tax, then take on the regular work themselves. I use VT Transaction Plus, which I think is ideal for this sort of work.
As I'm in a fairly remote part of West Wales, it would have to be mostly an online and postal based service, although I'm happy to consider wandering round the country parking my motorhome outside clients offices for a for days.
If it works, it could become a long term business, or could evolve into taking on regular work when I'm in a position to do so.
I'd appreciate any comments or suggestions on this.
I think a lot of bookkeepers get clients by sub contracting out to other accountants. For the shoebox clients we are probably bang in the middle of the busiest time, clients coming in last minute. You might have missed the boat on that one but a few telephone calls to some local accountants to introduce yourself, tell them about your experience and qualifications and perhaps saying you have some spare capacity at this busy time if they need any assistance. It's likely that they will want an hourly rate which isn't the way I like to price jobs but I don't think you have much option working like that.
Once you get to know these accountants it could be that you could take on some regular bookkeeping, the VAT etc. The only worry is your statement that you are not in a position to do regular work because if you let someone down you could end up burning your bridges.
