How to Start a Successful Bookkeeping Business: 15 Steps

Payroll deductions are monies that employers withhold from an employee’s pay. These deductions include withdrawals such as federal income taxes, state income taxes, local income taxes, FICA tax , medical benefits, retirement savings… Also, ask about how you can earn additional income by joining the CorpNet Partner Program. It’s free to join, and it allows you to expand your services and revenue potential through either reselling CorpNet services or referring customers to us.

• Whether this is due to illness or a family matter, it’s incredibly helpful for your brand if you’re able to offer your clients a suitable alternative.
• You can get certified in each of these programs, which can not only help you become a power user but can also help you market yourself as an expert.
• A skilled and compliant bookkeeper should be able to produce financial records that give business accurate information about its financial activities.
• Since all those starting a cpa firm are different, I won’t be able to provide you with detailed SOP’s here.
• If you plan to lease office space, then your mailing address will be wherever your office is located.
• To learn more about the ins and outs of setting up your own business, check out our small business guide on how to start a business and our guide on starting a bookkeeping business.
• You just need to fill out a simplified application and we’ll take care of the legal formalities at a much more reasonable rate than hiring a lawyer.

When employers advertise for a part-time bookkeeper, send out a resume with a cover letter. You need to find your own business clients on your own, at first they won’t find you but later they will. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 2014 median salary for Bookkeepers was $38,070 per year–$16.91 per hour. The industry is expected to add about 204,000 positions through 2022 an average rate of growth compared to other professions. This means that most Canadian businesses are small in size. Come up with Marketing Techniques for promoting your brand. Your brand image is important because it affects everything from how customers perceive your services to how much revenue you generate.

Chapter 2 – Create a Productized Service Offering

By positioning yourself as a specialist, you’ll be able to target your marketing and talk specifically to one audience. Join our Sage City community to speak with business people like you. Perhaps small businesses , micro businesses , or sole proprietors. Generally, you’ll charge either an hourly rate or a monthly fixed fee.

Hi, I recently made the switch to accounting and I love it. While I am not a CPA I absolutely love working in this field. The thing is I don’t know if i have enough how to start a bookkeeping business working experience yet. Do you know if there are places where people who already have up and running successful businesses look for people to do work for them?

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WordPress is pretty easy to learn and comes with tons of clean, free layouts that you can tweak to work for your business. EAs can work in any way they want, just like lawyers or certified public accountants. They have no limits on who they can represent as taxpayers, what kinds of tax issues they can handle, or in which IRS offices they can represent clients. Use the picture below as a step-by-step guide to writing a marketing plan for your bookkeeping business.

Learn more and get started with Bookkeeper Business Launch here. The course layout and navigation are not intuitive so it takes some time to get the hang of it. It could have been laid out to flow better but it’s definitely not a deal breaker. You will need to complete 18 units to learn the basics and get a “Complete BBL Course” star. The required modules are within the first three topics–Skills, Clients, and Systems. Get excited about your first client, then get back out there and find more.

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I’m an entrepreneurial CPA that founded Xen Accounting, a 100% cloud-based accounting firm, in 2013. Following its acquisition in 2018, I started Future Firm to help accountants fast-track the growth of a modern, scalable accounting firm of their own.

• Certification is also available within certain software products, too — for instance, you can get certified in QuickBooks.
• Also, consider a filing cabinet, desk, and great chair for your dedicated workspace.
• However, you will need to follow the basic guidelines laid out by GAAP if you plan on running your own bookkeeping business.
• My name is Shari Olson and I am the owner of Olson Accounting 2015 LLC.
• Whether you are doing this part-time or full-time, you don’t want to skip this step.
• It’s tough to stay on top of new trends and changes in the industry.

You will want to get some kind of insurance to protect you even further since you are in the service industry and working directly with clients. You can just call around to various insurance companies, let them know you’re opening a business, and share with them that you want to be protected with business insurance. Even if you haven’t started making money yet, it’s important to set up that bank account so it’s separate from your personal finances and ready to go once you do start bringing in the cash.

What office supplies do I need?

Virtual bookkeeping firms also need several non-accounting software subscriptions. You should have PDF editing, presentation, and time management or workflow software.

If the provider has a partner program, it will help you grow your business. When you leave a comment on this article, please note that if approved, it will be publicly available and visible at the bottom of the article on this blog. For more information on how Sage uses and looks after your personal data and the data protection rights you have, please read our Privacy Policy. In addition to this, you’ll be providing an essential service to your clients, helping them to run their businesses smoothly and efficiently. The basis for financial reporting comes out of generally accepted accounting practices or GAAP. Bookkeepers should familiarize themselves with the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s Accounting Standards Codification, which includes guidelines for recording specific transactions. That means you can work with your clients in real time to go over their bookkeeping and highlight any queries with ease.