Work From Home as A Freelance Bookkeeper
March 2, 2009 | Posted by admin
Working as a freelance bookkeeper can be a very lucrative home based business. With hundreds of new businesses starting every day, there are plenty of small businesses looking to outsource their bookkeeping.
As a freelance bookkeeper, you take the receipts and invoices of a business, and enter them into an accounting system. It could be a paper ledger system, but most bookkeeper enter receipts and invoices into a computer based accounting software such as QuickBooks. You then print the reports for the business owner. As you gain experience and education you might also offer payroll and tax preparation services.
You don’t need to be a CPA to do bookkeeping for small businesses. Many businesses will hire a freelance bookkeeper to do all the data entry, and then just pay a CPA or professional accountant to review the accounting and prepare the taxes.
There are many places to learn how to be a bookkeeper. I took accounting classes at the local community college. The cost was quite reasonable, and I learned all the accounting I needed in just under a year. There are also many online schools that will teach you how to use accounting software.
The start up costs for becoming a home based bookkeeper are quite reasonable. You need a reliable computer and printer. I would suggest a good internet connection as there are now many ways to work remotely as a bookkeeper. Plus good accounting software. I like QuickBooks software because it is the most popular accounting software. Your customers will be familiar with it and there is lots of support available.
The hardest part of becoming a freelance bookkeeper is finding customers. People are reluctant to trust you with their financial information until they know that you are skilled at what you are doing, and that you will keep their financial information private. Get started by offering your bookkeeping services for free to a small local non-profit. Do a good job and you will have a reference for your potential paying clients. You can also find clients by joining your local chamber of commerce and going to the meetings. Lots of new businesses go to chamber meetings, and most new businesses need a bookkeeper!
The pay rate for home based bookkeepers can vary quite a bit from place to place. Most experienced bookkeepers charge their customers between $25 to $50 per hour. It may be tempting to charge less when you are first getting started. But remember you are responsible for all your expenses and your taxes. You need to charge enough to cover all your expenses and make a profit.
Categories: work from home | 
Tags: freelance bookkeeper, home based bookkeeping, work from home | 
15 Comments »
Hi – I work at Intuit on the Payroll team – thanks for the nice mention! If you’re interested we’ve recently launched a new blog at http://www.IntuitPayrollBlog.com.
Thanks again!
Chris Kim
Intuit Payroll team
Thanks for stopping by. I’ll look at your blog when I get a chance.
But, it needs strong discipline and dedicated.
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working from home is ideal but far from easy. To be honest I never thought of doing bookkeeping. I always thought that you needed to be certified for that stuff. If you do find clients its great… but I think its tough.
i was working this and was not worth the money
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$25 to $50 for bookkeeping? Wow! Give me a job like that…
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I bought quickbooks about 5 months ago for my little business. It was overwhelming for me at first, but I got help from tech support and I’m doing pretty well with it now. It is a very powerful tool and saves you a lot of time once you get the hang of it.
I have been working at home of freelancing for quite some time, and it is the best being your own boss!
My wife works from home as a bookkeeper. Her biggest problem isn’t finding customers. She’s been running her own business for a few years and word of mouth is enough to get her a steady stream of clients. Her biggest problem is finding clients who are willing to pay enough to make doing their books worthwhile.
I have found that this can be a real problem. Many people don’t want to pay enough to make it worth your time. Just tell your wife to set her rates and stick to them. For whatever reason, people will not value her service if they can get it too cheap.
So how do you typically determine price? is it by the hour or by the page, or is it different for every project? Seems to me if you have a good idea the level of effort, you put together a menu so that people know what to expect.
outsourcing your bookkeeping people or department is a good idea. You’ve cut off employee salary, electric bill, computer purchases, etc… dedicated and honest bookkeeper is what we all need
thanks
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Having been in a simillar situation for the past year, a start up, at home bookkeeper, what advice could you share in order to find leads for clients and ultimately turns those leads into regular clients?
This is indeed a very lucrative home-based business and I hope many would take advantage of the demand for this job. Kudos for sharing!
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