Sylvia Jaumann's Blog

Back to School Sale

 Back to School Sale 50% OFF Ends August 16, 2014 DISCOUNT CODE:  SCHOOL           Bookkeeping Skills Academy The hands-on bookkeeping practice course to polish your skills and get you ready to take on lots of different clients all at once. Read more about it here .     Secrets to Starting and Running […]

How to Convert Potential Bookkeeping Clients

Are you still struggling with how to convert potential bookkeeping clients into paying bookkeeping clients?  You know how it goes.  You spend so much time meeting with potential clients, then end up never hearing another word from them again. I call these people “tire kickers” because they aren’t really sure what they’re looking for in [...]

How To Learn Accounting: Practice Makes Perfect!

  Are you a student who is struggling with how to learn accounting?  If you are, you most likely know very well that there’s a huge difference between learning from a textbook and actual real-world accounting.  Many beginner bookkeepers struggle with their self-confidence when it comes time to find a job in their field. This [...]

What’s a Typical Day for a Freelance Bookkeeper?

What does a typical day look like for a freelance bookkeeper?  If you’ve ever asked yourself that question, you may be surprised by the answer.  That’s because a typical day is anything but typical for most freelance bookkeepers. Some days you could spend the entire day on one client’s books.  Other days you could be [...]

WordPress Business Quotes Plugin

You’re going to love this!  I’ve put together a plugin for you to add to your bookkeeping business website.  It’s filled with inspirational business and success quotes from well known business people. So, if you have a WordPress website, just add it to your site as a plugin and it will automatically place one of [...]

End of Summer Book Sale

Just wanted to add a quick post to let you know about my “End of Summer Sale” where you can pick up a huge pile of my products for one low price. I’m having this sale because I’m trying to clear out a box of books that I have sitting in my closet.  I’d love [...]

What’s Your Bookkeeping Business Online Reputation?

I stumbled upon an interesting Google search the other day.  Someone had left a bad review about a bookkeeping business on http://www.yelp.com.  This unfortunate bookkeeper probably has no idea that her business is even listed there. That got me thinking about how vulnerable we are now in the age of the Internet.  One bad experience [...]

Accounting Comes Alive

  Have you ever tried explaining accounting to someone who doesn’t understand a debit from a credit?  Talk about frustrating for both parties! Working as a bookkeeper, I’ve found that even though I understand how accounting works, that doesn’t mean that it’s easily explainable to clients who really need to have a basic grasp on [...]

44 Businesses Looking for Bookkeepers in One Month?

Gabrielle Fontaine, author of various bookkeeping and QuickBooks publications, just wrote a very interesting blog post called “Is There Really a Shortage of Bookkeepers?”  She talks about how it seems that every bookkeeper she knows has a full client plate and there doesn’t seem to be enough bookkeepers to go around.

I found this surprising because from what I hear from most of my readers, they’re struggling to find clients.

In her post, Gabrielle concludes that most of these bookkeepers just seem to have trouble “connecting” with the business owners who need them.

I absolutely agree.  Marketing a bookkeeping business can be challenging because there are so many ways to do it and some of it can be costly to the bookkeeper who is starting on a shoestring budget.

There is good news, though.  It turns out, Gabrielle was actually contacted by a website called MiNeeds.com.  The way their website works is that MiNeeds connects service professionals with clients.  They were desperate to find bookkeepers to fill the numerous requests from small businesses they were receiving and wanted to know if she could refer any.

So she decided to test out their service by signing up and ended up receiving 44 service request emails from various businesses in a month’s time.  Very impressive!

So, if you’re looking for more clients, I suggest you first check out Gabrielle’s blog post and then hop over to MiNeeds.com and register for their service.  Apparently there is a free and a paid version.

From what I could see when I checked through the service providers on this site, there seems to be quite a few accountants and financial advisors but hardly any bookkeepers.  So this could be a good opportunity to connect with some potential clients.

There is one catch, though.  MiNeeds only services major cities in theUnited Statesso if you’re located outside of these areas, you may be out of luck. There are always possibilities of virtual bookkeeping though, so it won’t hurt to check into it.

You may also want to contact Gabrielle Fontaine directly to see if she’ll set you up as a referral partner.  She is apparently looking for top quality bookkeepers who are able to work virtually and who know specifically what types of clients they prefer to work with.

Read Gabrielle’s blog post here.

Check out MiNeeds here.

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What’s a Typical Day for a Freelance Bookkeeper?

What does a typical day look like for a freelance bookkeeper?  If you’ve ever asked yourself that question, you may be surprised by the answer.  That’s because a typical day is anything but typical for most freelance bookkeepers.

Some days you could spend the entire day on one client’s books.  Other days you could be doing the payroll for one client, handling government remittances for a couple of other businesses and then finishing off your day by doing Month End for another company.

If you have larger clients with more paperwork, you’ll obviously be spending more time posting Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable. As a result, you’ll probably be working on their file at least a few times a week.  In addition, these clients tend to have more staff and accordingly a larger payroll with the associated paperwork this entails.

Many smaller clients simply need their month end paperwork and bank reconciliations completed, so you’ll typically only do their books for a few hours a month.  They may also have payroll and government remittances for you to take care of.  If the client pays their remittances themselves, you’ll likely be filling out the forms for them and including this with the paperwork that you return to them each month.

There are so many variables based on the number of clients, as well as the type and size of businesses involved, that it’s almost impossible to demonstrate what a typical day would look like.  But that’s the beauty of being a freelance bookkeeper.  As long as you have enough bookkeeping work to keep you busy throughout the day, every day is different.

Obviously some of the tasks you do will be repetitive to a certain degree.  But I’ve found that each business has their own “personality” or “way” of doing things, which keeps things interesting.  No two businesses are the same.  For example, some small business owners may hand you their paperwork neatly organized and others will give you a pile of receipts that you have to sort out yourself.

So if you’re considering becoming a freelance bookkeeper, I guarantee that as long as you love the practice of bookkeeping itself and have enough clients to keep you busy, you’ll never be bored.