bookkeeping business- Am I Mad?

hi,
I was thinking of setting up a bookkeeping business and was wondering what peoples taughts are on this area. I am a qualified accountant and have a full time job but as things are getting slack i was thinking of reducing my days in my full time job and setting up a bookkeeping business. Nothing worse than sitting around an office all day with nothing to do!!!
Anyhow i've been thinking for a while now of setting up this business. Where do i start? Any idea where i could find out the rates people charge. What is the best way to advertise my new business. Is the demand really out there??? I don't expect that people that are already set up would actually move from their current bookkeeper so i need to get the word out to new businesses.

i would be grateful if people could come back to me with your taughts.
thanks

It's a bit odd for a qualified accountant to be offering a bookkeeping business.

Established businesses would be a better bet than new businesses. They may be using their auditors and a bookkeeping service might be cheaper. They may have a secretary doing it at the moment, but now want more technical input.

Stick an ad in the Golden Pages.
Circulate a flyer in your locality.
Circulate a flyer to accountancy practices in your area.
If you have industry specific experience and there is no conflict with your current employer, call up some companies in that industry.
Ask your employer to use his contacts.

Brendan

Make it your business to talk directly to every accounting practice in your area. I suspect that many of them will be very happy to outsource work to a bookkeeping business they can trust. The fact that you are a qualified accountant offering this service should increase their confidence in the quality of your work. On the other hand, they may be reluctant to give you work for fear of losing clients to another qualified accountant. Still nothing ventured nothing gained.

One potential pitfall. If your accountancy Institute deems your bookkeeping business as being an accountancy practice in itself, then they will subject you to heavy and expensive regulation, that may put you at a competitive disadvantage compared to other bookkeepers.

I dont know if this business model works profitably anymore. My limited experience is through a bookkeeping client who had around 50 cutomers using my accounts package and they collected the raw data and processed it with statements, aged debt vat and up to T/B level for their clients. THe net affect is that they had to employ data processing staff and found it very difficult to add reasonable margin. The better model ( my opinion only!) is where the client has the PC and accounts package themselves (so cheap now anyway) on site and you do a day a week say on site with say 5 clients charging them all a good daily rate and you process their data on site and/or supervise same. Another client (accountant like yourself) uses my software in a few sites like this and it seems a better option..

howareya said:

hi,
I was thinking of setting up a bookkeeping business and was wondering what peoples taughts are on this area. I am a qualified accountant ...

i would be grateful if people could come back to me with your taughts.
thanks

Click to expand...

If writing to potential clients, with all due respect remember check your spelling. Just my taught. Anyway, best of luck in your new business, I hope you do well. I think there is a niche in the market which is not filled. Every small business / tradesperson etc nowadays needs accounts in order to satisfy the revenue commissioners. If you offer your services at a reasonable price I am sure people will flock to you once word gets around. As a previous poster said, advertise a bit, but remember the best advertising is often word of mouth. Put a few leaflets or flyers in all small businesses in your area for a start.

Brendan said:

It's a bit odd for a qualified accountant to be offering a bookkeeping business.

Brendan

Click to expand...

Hi Brendan, Yes i agree but as yet i don't have the confidence to go ahead and open an accountancy practice.
In my opinion anyone can get an accountancy qualification... if you are good at learning off things. but its different when it comes to applying what you have learned.

When i was training (worked for 5 years in a practice) Bookkeeping was an area which i thought was a major problem for many people, whether they tried doing the bookeeping themselves and failed miserably or they got a bookeeping company to do all the work and what they produced was very below par. It is hard to find a good bookkeeper and this is why i was going to start here.

Rabbit thanks for the tip.... I can count but i can't spell. don't worry i would get everything proof read before i print anything

Hi there

I was in the same position as you, I am a qualified accountant, and worked in practice for five years.

I started in industry a couple of years ago and at that point started to take on bookkeeping clients. I currently have about 25 clients and am at the stage where I cant grow the business anymore due to my employment and am therefore considering dropping a couple of days.

I also find myself being offered accounts work when people find out I am qualified, I am restricted in this area at the moment due to not having a practicing certificate.

I started off by sending around leaflets to local businesses, I only had to do that once as I found that the majority of business comes through word of mouth.

I dont think you are mad, it is a lot of work though, especially if you continue your current job, I find myself working most evenings and weekends.

Hope this helps

Hi Tomorrow, this is exactly where i stand. i am in industry at the minute and it is actually becoming very slack but my current employer has things in the pipeline and would prefer if i would continue in his employment until these things come along. Sounds great but the lack of work is unbelievably boring and i don't know how much more i can take of this.
So i was actually going to say to him about me going on a 3 day week or something like that when i get the business up an going, but he actually said to me that i could carry out a bookkeeping activity aswell for myself from my current workstation so that i am there when he needs me.. Whether that would be ideal i'm not too sure but thats a different days work.

Can you tell me how long it took you to get the 25 clients and maybe if you wouldn't mind pm me a rough charge out rate for the work.
Or if there is anyone else out there that is either providing this service or obtaining this type of service could you please forward the the rates you are paying/charging.

Hi there - I'm probably definately mad to raise this now - again I'm a qualified Accountant - I'm currently working in the HSE but have always wanted to go into Practice but this was never feasible as it would have meant a cut in salary. I'm now thinking of taking the voluntary redunancy but realise there are no jobs available in practice. Ultimately, I would like to set up my own practice and has tossed the TaxAssist Franchise around in my head but this seems to be a lot of money. Any advice