Starting a home based bookkeeping service

[service you can trust]

Any advice on advertising my homebased bookkeeping service would be much appreciated. At the moment I am approaching established accountancy agencies and local business? Please help! A change of circumstances means that I have about three months to get up and running.

[profitxchange]

There are two markets:-
Those that already have a book keeper where you will have to displace the current encumbant - not easy.
Those that have no book keeping and are not interested. I beleive these have the potential - but you need to put a story line together that sells the benefits of having good visibility of one's financial position.
Tryt writing an article on the subject and get it publiched in the business section of your local paper, mail it out to prospects.
There may be other contributors that may be able to suggest sectors.

[fisicx]

When you say homebased, does this mean I have to bring my books to you or do you collect and deliver?

Are you using Sage or SAP. Can you get a license for my accounts package?

Can you do the books at my office?

What are you credentials? What qualifiactions to you have?

When you adverstise you need to offer something special, do something that all your competitors don't. When you arrange an meeting with me what are you offering that my present book keeper doesn't?

This is where you asre going to struggle. Just about every small business either does the books themselves or already has someone. And in todays economic situation, finding £100 per month for a book keeper is going to be a struggle. So what is it you offer?

[service you can trust]

Hope this answers you query. I want to build good relationships with my future companies, grow with them and eventually branch into consultancy and tax specialism. but I am still at the baby stage, hence I am looking for businesses that do not need me on site so that I can allocate my time more flexibly from home.

I provide a comprehensive, precise and timely home based bookkeeping service. Thereby alleviating sole traders and small businesses of the often time-consuming and repetitious, but nevertheless essential task of ensuring that they have an accurate and transparent audit trail in place and enabling them to concentrate on the people that matter. THEIR CUSTOMERS!

I have three years experience, I am proficient in both manual and computerised accounts payable, accounts receivable, general ledger, reconciliation, customer service and possess a sound understanding of general accounting principles. Additionally, I have trained on and mastered the Quickbooks Pro accounting program, am currently training on Sage and have an excellent working knowledge of Excel.

HOW I WORK

I offer three methods

Postal: You simply put all your financial transactions (or copies of them) into an envelope at the end of each accounting period (weekly, monthly or quarterly) and send them to me.

E-mail: Your financial data is scanned and then emailed to me at the end of each financial period. This way you are able to keep the originals of each document and I just work with the copies.

Collection Service: Depending on your location I can offer a collection service.

[roy]

This sounds like a good business for BNI - Business Network International

All networking is good for most businesses that are mainly locally based and the face to face approach helps build confidence and trust.

BNI is a bit 'Hard Core' for some folk but has proven to be very fruitful for me and thousands of others. Try it and see if you feel comfortable with it - it's not for everyone.

There are plenty of other less formidable networking opportunities like our own Antidote Network and the Chamber of Commerce breakfasts.

You might also find this article on business networking useful too.

[fisicx]

SYCT,

You have built yourself a huge barrier. Many small businesses won't want the hastle of sending your all their records each month - they certainly won't want to scan everything.

What might be better is for you to go to the client each month, do the book keeping and leave. Take a laptop if necessary. In addition many companies will already have some form of IT to look after their accounts so again you are not really reducing their workload if they then have to copy everything and sent it on to you.

The other issue is the actual applications - if I use a specific accounts package, are you going to buy a license as well? Can you imagine trying to load up your PC with everybody's system?

But if you do the books at their premises then you have the beginnings of a USP.

PS: The bookkeeeping services nearby sets up a VPN with their clients - the client doesn't need to do anything. You might want to consider this as an option.