My friend keeps telling me to not bother where the competition is not only high doing this but CPA’s start up bookkeeping businesses with tax experience have a huge edge not just in education but experience and why would they give me their important financial info. I said to get experience in quickbooks I would by it for myself then take a course at a community college first in accounting principles and a QB/payroll course. After that work 6 mo. /1 year for a bookkeeping company if they would take me and then try to start doing freelance? Does it not matter if your a cpa or very experienced or if you are not then are you just wasting time if I have nobody as a figurehead with lots of expereince and then that way they I can get customers? Also is there a way to niche this? My friend said his wife is a controller and left the bookkeeping company because they constantly had competitors poaching their clients and that would cut into profits so argh ! Any thoughts Please! Thank you for your suggestions:-)
Categorized | Affiliate Marketing 101
Freelancing Doing Quickbooks, Payroll And More Is It A Dead End Trying To Do This Not Being A Cpa?
Posted on January 3, 2011.
You need a solid background in accounting in order to be able to sustain a business like you’ve described.
Go to school and get your 4 years degree in accounting. If you still like what you’re doing then get your CPA. Then you can do what you want in business.
Not at all – you are a great alternative for people who cannot afford a CPA. For them the alternative to a CPA is do nothing at all – so your service will be very appealing to them.
Not only that – but if you could expand your services into small business consulting as well (the finance side) then you could provide them even more value that CPAs do not provide.
Imagine you could charge on a monthly basis for a package of services (anywhere between $200 – $500 a month). You get anywhere between 10 – 20 clients and you will be making between $2000 – $10,000 a month.
I am a small business consultant and I hear the many small business owner problems – the biggest is lack of cash flow. If you can help them get this part right – they will choose you over a CPA anyway. Or they can give you the work – and you can partner with a CPA to review.
Your goal would be to find a group of loyal ideal clients (between 10 – 20) and take care of them for the next few years. If you deliver outstanding customer satisfaction – it doesn’t matter how much people try to poach your customers – it will not work. And if they do, those are not the kind of customers you want anyway.
Hope this helps,
Will Pena, MBA
Small Business Consulting
Sapient Business Solutions, Inc.
Your idea is good to take a class in QuickBooks at a community college – some even have those online now and they don’t cost very much. There’s also QuickBooks classes at Lynda.com. And, another suggestion would be to join the Intuit Pro Advisor’s program – you will get unlimited tech support, online training as well as the QuickBooks software. I don’t think being a CPA isn’t really necessary, and, as QuickBooks is a relational data base and not exactly the double entry system that forms the foundation of what many CPA’s know – you may find that you actually can solve issues with QuickBooks that leave most CPA’s really mystified.
Yes, there’s always going to be competition in any business, so you need to not be put off by that fact of life and find a way to retain your clients by keeping the customer satisfaction high.
Best,
Janet Akpobome
Los Angeles
323-462-8968
http://www.qbproadvisor.blogspot.com