Accounting/ Payroll from home

hannahmum

Hi All,

Can anyone offer any advice on the above? I am an accountant with 5+ years experience as a Financial Controller. Looking to develop a business from home, providing accounting/ payroll services. Can anyone offer any advice/experience? Where would I begin to advertise/ source clients? Any info/ advice would be very much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

First thing to do is find out who your target market is. I assume since it's a home based roll, that you will be targetting small business start ups etc? Is it possible that you have a client list from your previous job or did customers know you well in a previous job where you could pretty much go after them and inform them of what you are doing and if you can help them etc. You should start off advertising in as many free places as you can to just get started, notice boards, free paper ads, local community etc and work from there. Good luck with it.

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

Many Niche your marketing - become the Accounts / Payroll expert for Doctors or some specialised group!

Offer free consultations of ways to improve existing business to your customers, then once you've done that make it clear how you could add value to their business. How the doctor would be better off seeing 3 patients rather than spending 2 hours on paper work etc.

DublinDilbert

Company set-up, Accounts & Tax advice for IT contractors would probably also be another area to look at...

Lots of people in this situation don't need the hassle of doing accounts on top of their normal workload. If you could come up with some sort of model for doing the work for a single person company for a fixed price, i'm sure that would be attractive to people also.

DublinDilbert

Fancy Dresser wrote: »

How the doctor would be better off seeing 3 patients rather than spending 2 hours on paper work etc.

More like seeing 15 patients rather than spending 2 hours on paper work

JoeTurner

Hi hannahmum

I was in a similar position to you - set up my own home based accounts / payroll / taxation practice after 6 years working in a multinational ssc.

My big break so far came when I joined a BNI chapter - it's basically a business network where members meet weekly and pass business to each other. About one-third of my income comes through the group now.

If you can spend a bit of time at networking events, basically getting out there and meeting people you'll find the work comes in quickly enough. It does take a while for the client base to build up though as people are hesitant to change accountants despite feeling they receive a bad service.

Other basic things to look out for are to obtain professional indemnity insurance and get your practicing certificate from your professional body.

Hope this helps - feel free to PM me if you have any more questions

Joe

Snowdrop

Hi Hannah

I have sent you a PM.

Snowdrop