Bookkeeping Services - How To Start A Successful Business From Home

You can continue to provide bookkeeping services and the preparation of final accounts to your local business community if you have been an accountant or an experienced bookkeeper before you retired.

This will not only help to keep you mentally engaged during retirement but also supplement your retirement income.

If you do not wish to take on too much work during your retirement, you can choose to provide only bookkeeping services. You can restrict your services to maintaining the:

• Sales Ledger
• Purchase Ledger
• Cash book and Petty Cash book
• Asset Ledger
• Extract a trial balance.

If your client asks you to provide the accountancy services as well, you can assess the situation and decide whether you wish to prepare the Profit and Loss Account and Balance Sheet. Don't be afraid to say "no" if you don't want to do the final accounts.

What you will need to consider

Start-up Costs

Working from home, you will have minimal start-up cost. You'll need:

• a desk, a chair and a filing cabinet
• a computer installed with a small business accounting software such as Sage, Pegasus or Quickbooks, and a back-up external drive
• a reliable printer and paper
• a telephone line with voicemail facility or an answering machine.

A website to promote your services

A good way to promote your services is to provide good bookkeeping and accountancy related contents on your website. These articles will show-case you as an expert in your field and will raise your profile. You can, for example, begin by writing topics on the basics of double-entry bookkeeping or the steps you will take when the trial balance does not balance.

Other Ways to Find Clients