We receive emails from accountants and bookkeepers that have been working in the industry for years, and then become frozen like rabbits in the car headlights at night. They become mesmerized by the prospect of having to find bookkeeping clients.

You may be a very good bookkeeper, but how do you tell that to a business owner who has had a few bad experiences with previous bookkeepers?

After you’ve spent money putting an advert in the local newspaper, or yellow pages, you sit back and wait for the phone to ring – right? Well, good luck with that. Consider this: the advertising industry tends to make the money on the sale of their product, not on the sale of your product / service.

The success of your advertisement is of no importance to your local newspaper or printed business directory. So now bookkeepers are turning to PPC (pay per click) campaigns on the internet.

That sort of strategy can be succesful, depending on a few factors such as bidding for the correct keyword, having the correct landing page, and then being able to convert your lead.

We receive daily enquiries from small business owners seeking a reliable bookkeeper. It’s not exactly rocket science, which is why bookkeepers have been asking us how to find clients themselves.

To make life simpler for everybody, we compiled a book, aptly named “Secrets To Finding Bookkeeping Clients” which will answer many of the questions you already have, and also some that you haven’t even thought of yet.

If you are struggling to find book keeping clients, then do yourself a favour and get yourself a copy of “Secrets To Finding Bookkeeping Clients and discover for yourself why finding book-keeping clients is so simple.

We’ve had a number of wanna-be bookkeepers who have contacted us after going through the program. Strangely there seems to be some areas lacking in the direction that these bookkeepers are given

We’ve talked many times about the fact that having a “qualification” or completing a “course” does not necessarily make you ready to go out into the big wide world and start a bookkeeping business.

Unfortunately for the unsuspecting business owner, there are many so-called bookkeepers who have done just that. Then, when it’s too late, we’ve had desperate calls from those business owners wanting us to untangle paperwork and try and get thier bookwork in to some kind of order.

Considering that NEIS is a Government supported program it would make sense that the students would be made aware of legislation that may affect the operation of their business. So why do we have individuals want to set up as bookkeepers, who are totally ignorant of their responsibilities in terms of BAS lodgments?

How exciting to know that our hard earned tax dollars are being fully and efficiently utilised.

Have you really thought the situation through? Here’s some points to consider in your decision making process:
1) Small businesses outsource a bookeeper because they don’t know how to do the books / don’t have time/ don’t wan’t to / don’t like doing the books. In most instances they don’t know what’s required – they just “want it done” – but often you (as the client’s book-keeper) can talk with their accountant to see what the accountant specifically requires for this client.

2) When a business is seeking a bookkeeper, they want the bookkeeper yesterday, but often they won’t give you all the information until “next week” !!!! They may not even be ready for you to start for a few months

3) Generally hours are by mutual agreement – it’s not a “boss / employee” situation

4) Some businesses may require you to work on their premises – no matter what – and it’s normally during business hours – others you can pick up and do at home – they just want it done by the required deadlines

5) Time frames – Put yourself in their position – if you wanted a baby-sitter and the baby sitter only turned up when they felt like it, how would you feel? If you wanted your car serviced, would you mind if the mechanic took weeks to fix your car?

6) Hourly rate – you don’t get sick leave / holiday pay / super / etc – so you need to allow for that in your calculations

7) Are you ready to start your own business?
a) Only you can decide – you may have the skills, but do you have the desire, the discipline and motivation to work for yourself?
b) A business owner expects their bookkeeper to do their books FOREVER – they do not want a new bookkeeper each week
c) You can’t just “give it a try” – you either take the splunge or you don’t – and once you’ve started – you need to keep going

8 ) Get yourself a five year plan – part time 20 / 30 hours per week and you could earn $800 – $1000 pw – so where do you see yourself in five years?
We’ve got clients that we’ve serviced for many years. As one client siad to one of our bookkeepers : ” I’ve known you for a longer period of time than I knew any of my ex-wives. It’s like you are part of the family!!”

We have a service whereby we help experienced bookkeepers source clients – we do not work with every bookkeeper, and neither do we take on every client – we are looking to get the right / client / bookkeeper teamed up, so that everybody wins.Contact us for more details

You could get some flyers printed very cheaply to promote your bookkeeping business. Then pay some one to deliver them. Better still, go for a walk in your neighbourhood, and drop them into the letter boxes. You’ll be sure to pick up some clients that need their bookkwork doing, and you could offer them an introductory rate.

Will you help me build my bookkeeping business?

You can show your new bookkeeping clients how they’ll save money by engaging you, then they’ll tell their friends. By keeping it local, you’ll cut down travel time, and may even find that they’ll drop off the paperwork to you on their way past to their next job

How effective is newspaper advertising?

Advertising in the local paper is not very cost effective in our experience. You need to do it every week for a few months. It’s what other bookkeepers do, because it’s “easy”. They try it a few times, investing money that they didn’t really have in the first place, and seem surprised when the phone doesn’t ring. Then they contact us and ask us if we’ll help them build their bookkeeping business

If you want some help in designing your flyers, contact us, and we’ll give you some pointers about what does and doesn’t work. Initially you may spend three days a week chasing new bookkeeping clients, and a couple of days doing bookkeeping with your new clients.

After a few weeks, you’ll find you are doing four days working and one day chasing new business

Many bookkeepers start out while already working for a boss. There’s no reason why you couldn’t keep asking around and pick up some clients to work on after hours. That way you are not reliant on your job, and if anything should happen down the track, you won’t be left stranded.

That’s basically all we did to get started. Soon we found that we had more work, and were earning more than the regular “job”, so we made the decision to quit, and go our own ways. The question you’re asking is “How much do I charge?”

There’s no straight forward answer. Recently we phoned around town looking for a lawyer to help with a situation. Just to get started we were asked for $5000 up front to be put in a trust account, and were told the hourly rate was $350. Another lawyer quoted $275 with $1000 upfront, and the “cheapest” was $200 per hour. It’s a similar story with bookkeepers, in that there can be a wide variation of rates.

If you want more guidance with starting your own bookkkeeping busines then buy a franchise for between $30k – $50k. Or contact us and start to benefit from over thirty years of experience from the “school of hard knocks”

The first thing is to spell it correctly. Some people call it bookeeping, others bokkeeping, and others bookkeeeping.

Once you’ve overcome that hurdle, you’ve made a start, which is great.