In this minisode, I’m sharing the top 3 questions people ask when thinking about starting their bookkeeping business especially without tax experience.
Hey, when you start thinking about starting your bookkeeping business, you want to consider these three factors before you go any further, and it isn't creating a website or picking out a name. I'm going to share with you in this video, or if you're listening on the podcast in this minisode, the top three things I get asked about. Welcome to the Ambitious Bookkeeper channel. Today I'm going to cover the top three questions I get asked that will help you If you've been considering starting a bookkeeping business. Let's get into it. Number one I have an audit and a corporate controllership background with almost no tax experience. In an accounting services world where it seems like tax is always part of the package, clients aren't going to want to have to deal with multiple accounting firms or bookkeeping tax services. How would you advise getting around this if you're going into business alone? Okay, so my take is many bookkeeping firms don't offer tax. I don't either. We just have a handful of tax pros that we recommend, and maybe down the line we might add tax, but like you, Or this person asking the question, I don't have a strong tax background, so that would mean hiring someone else to lead that department or merge with another firm. Many clients come to us already with a tax pro, so my advice here is to build relationships with tax pros that you can refer to and trust, and they'll also refer to you. Number two, the software dynamic. Is it better for the client to own the software and you log in virtually? What if they don't have cloud services? What other softwares do you use for admin work like billing, file sharing, security, etc? Okay, this one is a loaded question. Depending on how streamlined you want to be, using cloud software may be the only way to go. If you're wanting to work with larger businesses, they may be on an ERP system that you could just log into remotely. But most small businesses are already on something like QuickBooks or QuickBooks Online. And what we do is we migrate all of our clients to Xero because I like it better. And then we manage the subscription, but if we part ways, we just transfer the subscription to them. We use Xero internally also for our own billing. For file sharing, we use Google Workspace. Check out my free training where I cover this in depth, ambitiousbookkeeper. com slash training. And I also have a podcast episode called How We Collaborate with Clients Part 2 I will drop the link below. where you're watching or listening to this. And you can also sign up for The Bookkeeping Biz Workshops and learn all about this live. We host them about two to three times per year, and our next session is in January. So stay tuned for that. Number three, forming an LLC, business structure, startup costs, et cetera. What was it like for you? Okay, so I started as a sole proprietor. with professional liability insurance, which I waited to purchase until I landed my very first client. So I wasn't spending any money until I really had some money coming in. I started out in California, which is where I was living, and California charges 800 per year just to file an LLC. So that's why I didn't end up going that route to begin with. If I started all over again though, I would just Spend the money on the LLC and do that from the beginning. However, after things started taking off, about six plus monthly clients, we ended up moving to Arizona and that's where I ended up filing and forming my LLC. I do have a podcast about insurance called What Kind of Insurance Do Bookkeepers Need? And I now go through RiskDesk, which is the company that I'm talking to in that podcast, for all of my business insurance for both companies. They are absolutely great to work with. As far as costs go, like I said, I kept it lean and only paid for things as I had revenue coming in initially. And honestly, I'm a cheerleader of doing that as well. So, I'm here cheering you on. If you are in this stage of thinking and dreaming about starting a business, I hope this episode was helpful for you. If you want to learn with me live all about starting a bookkeeping business, like I said, head to bkworkshops. online to get notified about our next workshop series. And if you're ready to just hit the ground running now and get started, head to ambitiousbookkeeper. com slash BBA to enroll in The Bookkeeping Business Accelerator where I go through all of this in great depth, and you have a community to support you along the way. Thanks for listening to this mini sode or watching on YouTube. Talk to you soon!