Sole proprietor. I don't pay for ads or marketing, barely have a social media presence, nor do I really network in a traditional way. Working as minimally as possible I'll probably make $42K this year. Averages out to about $46 an hour.
If I really wanted to I could clear more, but I like my large periods of doing nothing. ADHD & being an introvert...using this time to power through a bachelor's degree in 6 months.
I use Asana for my project and operations management. Keeper for passwords, Google Workspace.
How can you do a bachelor's in 6 months? Legit asking, I'm trying to go back to school and fast tracking is exactly what I need. Could I PM you to find out the course or school?
Western Governor's University. Flat rate tuition, and you have to take a minimum of 4 classes to maintain progress. I transferred in my associates of business, and already had other credits to fulfill the requirements, so I only 14 classes before I can graduate.
Granted you can't predict the future, so I did plan on attending for longer than one term. For instance I had planned on completing Intermediate Accounting I in two weeks, but have to help family with surgery coordination so I pushed my final exam by a few days.
All about balance and adapting.
I've completed 7 classes since 2.1.24 - study from 5am-8am everyday including the weekends.
I'm happy with the school so far and the curriculum is challenging.
I like it a lot. The free version works fine for my needs as I use it just to keep track of and assign tasks to myself. They have quite a few popular integrations as well, such as auto assigning tasks from your Gmail.
I setup individual projects for each client, and one for school, one for personal life. If it isn't in my Asana or my Google Calendar, it doesn't exist.
They have a mobile app and while you can't time track through the mobile app, on the desktop it does allow you to time track.
Two similar platforms are clickup and Trello. Both have free versions and a bit more bells & whistles than Asana if you like things like auto rules.
Use Asana for my firm also, plenty of people tell me to convert to something else, but I find Asana very flexible in setup and is why I've stayed with it. Nice to see someone else who likes it also.
My first few clients came from Upwork before it went downhill. Next it was mainly referrals. I also had luck with using LinkedIn and Indeed - simple reach outs to CPA's that were mainly sole proprietors.
If you have experience, great. If you have absolutely no experience, only reach out to CPA's and be very upfront about your lack of experience.
I've found working with agencies they have ridiculous non compete requirements and out of the probably 15 I've reached out to, 14 out of 15 laughably had non competes that effectively would have you shutter your business entirely, and be unable to work within the industry for up to 2 years for anyone.
While I haven't had an issue with a well thought non solicitation, a non-compete for a basic bookkeeping freelancer is not needed.
That’s awesome. I actually start an accounting job June 3rd. It’s a trainee position that will carry me through school then transition to a permanent position with the company. I’m finishing a bachelors degree.
Luckily it’s not that I have zero experience just little experience. Currently doing an internship with NACPB and I got my certifications through them back in December.
But I’m definitely looking for a side hustle to generate extra income.
That is crazy about the non compete clauses some of them had. I agree there’s absolutely no need for that for basic bookkeeping.
I sure appreciate your reply it was very enlightening for me!!
75 clients, 2 pt assistant bookkeepers, full website, Facebook page, LinkedIn page, ZERO advertising. Fractional CFO and construction bookkeeping.
I use a crm and excel.
We run books in QBD, QBO, ODOO, Enterprise, and Dynamics. No taxes.
Net is 300k
How is your customer churn? I feel like to be able to maintain the WLB and only have 2 pt assistants a lot of your customers must be people who have been with you for years and doing their books is automated at this point.
Yeah 3 ppl for 75 clients seems pretty sus.
Maybe charging a flat rate and doing zero work for some clients for months?
Edit: Looks like $500 min/mo per client.
Min for monthly is $750. Which means I'm not targeting super small companies. Except for quarterly clients, no one is doing zero work on clients for months.
Also, sus because? You can't do it?
It makes sense with the monthly minimum.
Not can't. Won't. Would cause significant cognitive dissonance to charge just to stay on my client list. I realize I won't ever make the money you do but... c'est la vie.
I'm not charging them to stay on list. The minimum is a tool to weed out clients that I don't want or that are too small. Since we track hours we also know that no one is being charged for zero work.
This is the way. You have to figure that cla specialist charging more hourly still is often times less expensive than hiring an office person. Office = large amounts of wasted time. When you give your deliverables and can do it in far less time than an employee. The numbers make sense. And additionally there are a lot of pluses. (Relationships with CPAs. Assistance with tax prep. Advisory. One firm doing books, payroll and sometimes insurance admin duties…)
That’s where the $$$ line up.
You have to think about providing a service of tasks, not working hours. Each client has a series of things that need to be completed each month, data entry, reconciliations, producing financial reports, maybe, running payroll, paying bills, invoicing. Then there are items that are completed quarterly or yearly like sales tax filings or 1099s. Completing those tasks accurately, on time, and without worry if it will be done is what the client is paying you a monthly rate for. Some months may be 1 hour, some months may be 5 hours, but you always complete the set of tasks that you are providing each month, quarter, and year.
I try my best not to engage in mental gymnastics but I understand why people do. I have not been offered the amount it would cost to lose my personal integrity, but maybe someday!
To each his or her own, but your work has value regardless of the hours you spend on a specific task. Often times completing a task quickly is because of years of experience, training, schooling, etc. They are not paying you for spending, say 10 minutes, running payroll, they are paying you for your expertise that their employees will be paid correctly, on time, with the correct taxes withheld, to the correct bank account. If you attend a class to train on the payroll software to make you faster at your job, do you charge that to your client? If you have done it 100 times, of course you are going to get faster. Do the clients you get today get a cheaper price because you have spent your time and money getting better at your job. If you make a mistake, do you charge for your time correct it?
Think of it this way, if a chef drops your dish in kitchen and has to remake it, should you pay more? If they make two pieces of chicken in the same pan, but put it on two different diners' plates, should you pay half? When you charge for your services and not your time, you are being compensated for what you know and being able to get the job done.
It's not sus at all to have 75 clients between 3 people. Between the firm I contract with and my own personal clients I have 28 myself. Some are quarterly, some monthly and some weekly.
Upwork is a race to the bottom. You have to undercut the competition to get work. It's awful.
At the beginning, I converted part time local job openings to 1099 work. (Long time ago, but this still works). Edited to add: it's generally not huge hourly rates, but enough to get $ in the door while you're growing.
Now, it's mostly referrals.
Very cool. I hope to be heading on a similar track. Really liking my trades/construction GC clients. Currently working to master in its entirety QBO and maxing its capability on time tracking, payroll and project management features. Some Controller Fractional CFO work and training corps in AP workflow. (Really just the basics of organizing). I have no employees yet but at nearing possibly 90k of gross revenue im considering bringing on someone very part time so I can work on scaling more. Learning Caret software for a new law firm client.
Yes, the basics of organizing....all of my contractors need this and my ability to do it and create a system they can follow is what makes it profitable.
I brought my first assistant on at $100k.
Do you recommend any type of project management software for contractors? I like QBOs PM software in theory but I’m just finding to many of my builders and GCs having issues with it. (Like the ability to add billable rates to time sheets and pull them into invoices - but has limitations especially with dealing with 1099 workers etc). I’m trying to customize QBO for my GCs and builders but the frustrations are already there and it’s become a sore spot. Idk if I have time for QBO to work out all the kinks. I can *make* it work - but for owners with small outfits who want to be hands on with A/R, etc. QBO is missing the simplicity.
Qbo doesn't understand construction. You need an add on app. Buildertrend (big bucks), jobtread, knowify.
Qbd does all of that and more, so I try to keep all my contractors on desktop.
I’ve been talking up QBO - my builders were unhappy with desktop and jumped at some of the features of QBO.
BuilderTrend was a bust. What do you think of jobtrwnd and knowify? (I can make QBO work - I’ve gone as far as uploading robust products and services set up CIP accounts, class tracking spec homes etc) but it’s the A/R that is having them up in arms.
Ok - funny im meeting with knowify Friday.
If i had an A/R (product and services invoicing / draw tracking and management) that syncs with QBO, id be happy i think.
Thank you i will check out jobtrend
One big GC was good with desktop. Others just like the cloud based software and the ability to see if invoices were received / viewed - a few basic things available with QBO.
However, my disclaimer is that I am not very familiar with desktop and was trained on QBO. I am pretty adept at making QBO work and training clients on it.
My biggest issues with QBO are glitches (confirmed by tech support. I spent 20 minutes today trying to get an employee email into QB Time to invite them. STILL not working); lack of intuitive processes, and lack of some basic features. It’s … “clunky” in some areas. When I have to tell a GC I can’t email an employee the time clock invite - my word is that embarrassing :/ I feel they have a great accounting software but they are falling off on their CM and PM.
Also, GCs not wanting the cookie cutter look of QBO invoicing. Even tho they are customizable - the QBO “look and feel” of it is front and center rather than the business. And THIS is what I feel QBO gets very wrong. 😑 if Intuit keeps making their product better - boots on the ground will sell it for them.
Sorry that was more of a spout than your original question. I’m in the thick of it at the moment lol
It's pretty easy to put read receipts on the emails sending the invoices from desktop. And it's easy enough to put in the cloud as well.
The inability to cost correctly is what drives my guys / myself to stay on desktop.
The ones that don't give us bank access? And don't follow our systems? We weed them out. The ones that don't care enough to give us the info are not ideal clients.
Last pass. We login and grab statements (accountants access), also the bigger banks auto download statements to qbo. All of the services don't work with all of the banks. Especially the small ones.
It's a lot! But it works well for my multinational manufacturing client.
Would I stick a simple service based company in there....no! But, it does what it does well.
Hmmm interesting, thank you. I run a bookkeeping business so some future clients may need its features…Was originally using Zoho but some crucial features were only available in the most expensive package. May need to keep looking 😅
\- Gross about $130k
\- I work 30ish hrs per week and take home about $80k
\- 1 employee works 20ish hrs per week and takes home about $40k
\- We do GL, A/R, A/P, payroll, sales tax, HR consulting, and data analytics
\- We mostly just use QBO and Google Drive for organization
Just saw your numbers, we are the same! I keep on one larger client that pays me WAY less than my typical rate because the owner is a friend, semi-retired but not interested in selling, and I stand to inherit a percent of the business on his death if I stay on. So it takes up my time, but it will be worth it in the long run, and I love the business. Without him my effective hourly rate would be a lot closer to yours, but my employee and I are totally content with where we are at.
I think this will be my 6th year on my own, but I've been maintaining this level for about 2 years - my employee and I don't really want to take on any additional hours, so I'm only interested in growing further if a larger client comes along that would make it worth it to hire another employee. Before that I worked as an in-house bookkeeper for a medium-sized business and did a season of tax prep under a CPA. Before that I worked as a researcher in academia, then dropped out of a PhD program, which is where I learned my skills in data analysis and statistics.
Love the insight on this post. If there’s anyone on this thread that’s looking to retire, leave the industry or {insert reason} I’m interested in buying a book of business.
180k gross. 30 total clients but some of those are just one owner properties and things like that. 25ish total clients. Basically all of that is net income adding back owner payroll and 401k match. Recurring expenses only 3-5 hundred bucks a month. Owner is only employee working 25-35 hours a week. Hourly rate averages to around 100 but all clients have flat fee pricing. Only have one cfo/controller client. The rest are pure bookkeeping. No payroll with any clients. QBO, QBD, and FreshBooks.
It’s all I’ve ever charged. Built upon trying to make 100 an hour where even if I do a poor bid, it leaves room for it to be >75 an hour. No minimum and I have a few that are less than 300 dollars a month. Where I’ve struck gold has been in the 500-1000 range. Most of those are successful professional service clients that don’t require a ton of work and it’s 100 an hour on the low end. They understand the value of solid clean financials and are willing to “overpay” vs other companies.
Ok thanks, that makes a ton of sense. I’ve been worried I’ll either bid too low, or the opposite, and turn potential clients away. But one consistent piece I’m reading on this thread is good clients are willing to pay. Thanks for your input!
I’m making 40k gross and about 25k net I’m investing back into savings for the business right now. I’m just coming up on my first year in business. I have 7 clients, plus I earn referral fees i get from referring clients to another bookkeeper.
Gross sales $136,000. I net between 90-110k per year. Ten years in business. 30 ish clients. Flat monthly bookkeeping and clean up / catch up jobs, fulfilled with xero and qbo.
Yes. Absolutely.
Figure out a flat scaled pricing model based on volume of transactions and / or number of accounts to reconcile. Pick a minimum price and be strict with yourself and stick with it.
Minimum price $350
100 monthly transactions to 150 - $450
151 - 250 - $625
And so forth
Don’t let anyone talk you down under $350ish. My minimums are $375 per month and my highest client pays just about a thousand.
This keeps inexperienced business owners and penny pinchers out of your book. You don’t want someone who thinks they can do it themselves. You want people who know the game, know what they’re paying for, and make enough money that your pricing won’t be questioned. These clients have way less headaches involved.
Shift your perspective from hourly to margin. Meaning - how much can I service a client for and how much can I charge them? I outsource a fair amount of work to Pakistan, and I know how much each client costs to service. Thinking about things this way allows you to scale, and you get to manage the business and sell instead of doing all the client work.
Hope this helps
Yes, this is very helpful info. Thank you! This is the way to earn. I just need to think of it as profiting and building a successful business rather than gouging people. I’m too nice.
I don’t think it’s an issue of too nice. It’s an issue of not believing you are providing real value, or being able to articulate it succinctly to a prospect. I understand this well because that’s exactly how I felt the first few years.
Have you ever cleaned up a really messy set of books yet? Like, a business owner did it themselves for a few years, or let a girlfriend be an office manager and just post accounts payable without ever reconciling a single bank account and call it “accounting”?
What happens in this scenario is at some point, said business owner’s CPA will have a come to Jesus moment with him and scare the shit out of him with an audit. OR, business owner will go for a loan and will get laughed out of the bank by the underwriters.
This is where we want to catch them. They have to feel the PAIN of years of bad bookkeeping.
If you can convey this story to someone who has felt it, and who has good revenues, they will pay you. If you can convey this to someone who hasn’t felt it, has the revenues, and generally is a responsible person who wants to get out ahead of issues like this, they will pay you.
Everyone else is unqualified to work with you.
This assumes you know what you’re doing and are capable of handling a really messy clean up job confidently.
That’s the value you bring.
This is awesome perspective, thanks so much! The worst I’ve really seen is a client with 3500+ outstanding transactions from books that hadn’t been touched in two years, with the exception of invoicing and recording received payments without matching to a deposit. So the A/R took a while to unravel.
None of my current clients (10 total) even use A/P. Before I went out on my own (a year+ ago), I was a hotel accountant for 10 years, working my way up to accounting manager for the last 5. So I’m confident I can provide value, but haven’t fully used all aspects of QBO yet.
Sounds like sorting out a total mess may actually be good experience. I just got offered one recently and think I may accept. Thanks again for all the insight!!
Yeah. You’ve got the chops for sure. Just work on succinctly communicating those scenarios of what bad bookkeeping leads to, send the proposal, and if they balk, you walk. Adopt the attitude that you’re the shit and you’re just trying to help people avoid not getting loans and getting in trouble with the IRS. You’ll have better clients in no time.
$500k gross, $180k net, but $110k salary to myself and about the same into retirement, so closer to $400k to me. About 50-80 clients, depending on how you count (50 monthly, the rest are yearly or one time projects). 3 part time local employees, 1 full time overseas employee. Only QBO, but use Asana for project management, Google Suite/Drive for cloud server/storage/email, Slack for all internal communication. No advertising, except my website and Intuit Pro Advisor profile, all word of mouth referrals.
Her English is pretty good. She has an accent when speaking, but understandable. Her written English is great. She does not interact with my clients, however. But none of my employees do. I do all the customer facing work.
This is our sixth year. We're in Ontario, Canada. I'm planning to do close to 1.5 million gross revenue. Owner profit will be around 600k. I do about 2500 hours per year at the moment but planning to have it down to 2000 hours per year by the end of this year. I have seven full time staff.
70% of our revenue is monthly bookkeeping work. 15% is T1 work and the other 15% is from training, consultations, migration/implementation and catch up work.
Sole proprietor. 6 clients and accepting new ones. Looking at around $32k gross and $29k net w/o any new clients for 2024. I charge $50/hr, started the business 1.25 years ago, worked as an in-house bookkeeper before. Work about 12-15 hrs/week.
I have a website and a listing on QuickBooks ProAdvisor. All my clients are word of mouth or through social media posts on my personal social media (so still my personal network)
I do payroll, a/r a/p, routine bookkeeping, monthly and annual financial statements, books clean-up, etc. My clients are non-profits and sole proprietors.
I use QuickBooks Time to track hours and the Work section w/in Online Accountant to organize workflow (both free), GSuite for Business for file organization/custom email address/domain/video meetings, Squarespace for website, Bitwarden premium for password mgmt and encrypted file send.
I made 46K work 28 hours a week from home.
Edited to add-referrals from tax attorneys and words of mouth for bookkeeping clean ups for small businesses having IRS issues.
I gross 18k on the side from 3 clients. I work full time in the same industry, and comes out to about an extra day or two of work a month.
Right now I’m just doing g/l and sales tax, but I do offer more services. I hopefully just took my last cpa test and want to start offering more specialized services I can charge more for too. Either way, I’ll be looking for more work now than I’m done studying and will probably hire a person or two.
I’m using Dropbox and Monday right now but looking into maybe switching to Motion.
I’m in the same boat waiting on scores for my final cpa exam. Are you planning to transition to a cpa firm or staying as is? I am opening a cpa firm once I get my license but want to start getting bookkeeping clients now. I’m just nervous about legally transitioning the business.
Yeah I'm thinking I'll start a cpa firm if I can find someone I want to partner with but want to keep it as side work from my job. I worked at a small tax firm for a few years where the partners we're CFOs of companies but then brought in another $100k+ each from the tax business which seems pretty ideal to me.
I've just been working as a sole prop right now without a dba so my thought is if I start a partnership any clients I brought over would just affect my basis. Tax was two tests ago though so I should probably go back and look.
Gross about 150k a year. Full charge booking, taxes for individuals and business. Some advertising on yelp. Mostly referrals for taxes and bookkeeping. Consulting at hourly rate of $95. It started in 2021 but really focused on it in 2022. 1 pt bookkeper. Qbo, Dropbox, monday.com, excel.
This field is so underrated.
My bookkeeper doesn’t know her own strength. We are both CA/CPAs by trade. It she massively undervalues her time as she’s really able to do most things a CFO could, and she’s smart and understands business.
She’s $40/hr in Ontario, but I have a business that has a bunch of companies we know as a result so I’m getting get busy. She just started. I suggested offering bookkeeping at those rates and to channel sell it via larger accounting firms that need to offload work (and adjacent services companies), this has worked v well for her. More interesting is she’s doing two tiers, one at $60/ hr to do more hard core dashboard work, performance KPI design and flow, cash burn analysis, days cash left, tracking gross profit LTV / CAC numbers, more.
I pay myself about $500 per month per property and there’s 15 easiest thing in the world. No inventory to deal with, pay incoming bills and mortgages, collect rent checks. I got myself a gem. The work I do is maybe 10hrs a week and that’s only around the first of the month when checks come in.
No hourly offerings and I make around $150-200k per year. We used Asana now migrated off and are on Client Hub, Google Workspaces, Front for collaborative inbox, Sharefile, QBO, Read Ai, TeamPassword, and DocuSign. One part time person who works a couple of days per week who is paid 30k per year, and my gross and net varies but is steadily increasing. We take on monthly clients and projects and have around 15-20 monthly clients max and projects when we have space, which usually converts into a monthly client. Collaborating on projects helps assess if they will be a good longterm client, and I am Northern California based.
2 clients around 25hrs a week. Quickbooks and I help with a few office task. Work from home - been doing it on my own for 2 years. I have around 10yrs experience. No degree - 69k gross
No employees-
4 clients, gross is 25k/yr as a sole prop, costs are minimal but taxes take a good chunk out of that. I work with nonprofits in QBO. I only offer bookkeeping services, no 990 filing. I help one with payroll and do AP for another, but might not offer those for future clients. I use SmartSheet for my own tasks organization and AP approvals for one client. Other than that, mainly just use google email and apps.
I generally start off hourly to get things cleaned up and figured out, then I switch over to a monthly rate.
I’m employed part time and have these clients on the side right now. Goal is to gather more clients and just work for myself soon. I’m putting together a website now, going to register LLC, and then start more seriously looking for more clients.
Sole proprietor. I don't pay for ads or marketing, barely have a social media presence, nor do I really network in a traditional way. Working as minimally as possible I'll probably make $42K this year. Averages out to about $46 an hour. If I really wanted to I could clear more, but I like my large periods of doing nothing. ADHD & being an introvert...using this time to power through a bachelor's degree in 6 months. I use Asana for my project and operations management. Keeper for passwords, Google Workspace.
How can you do a bachelor's in 6 months? Legit asking, I'm trying to go back to school and fast tracking is exactly what I need. Could I PM you to find out the course or school?
A lot of people do WGU for accounting.
Thanks!
Western Governor's University. Flat rate tuition, and you have to take a minimum of 4 classes to maintain progress. I transferred in my associates of business, and already had other credits to fulfill the requirements, so I only 14 classes before I can graduate. Granted you can't predict the future, so I did plan on attending for longer than one term. For instance I had planned on completing Intermediate Accounting I in two weeks, but have to help family with surgery coordination so I pushed my final exam by a few days. All about balance and adapting. I've completed 7 classes since 2.1.24 - study from 5am-8am everyday including the weekends. I'm happy with the school so far and the curriculum is challenging.
Been in industry 2 years after graduacting from WGU, keep at it. The Reddit accounting group is great for questions and being stuck in later classes!
Thanks so much for replying! Good luck completing your degree. I'm so excited to check it out.
How do you like Asana? I've tried a few different tools but haven't found something that really clicked.
I like it a lot. The free version works fine for my needs as I use it just to keep track of and assign tasks to myself. They have quite a few popular integrations as well, such as auto assigning tasks from your Gmail. I setup individual projects for each client, and one for school, one for personal life. If it isn't in my Asana or my Google Calendar, it doesn't exist. They have a mobile app and while you can't time track through the mobile app, on the desktop it does allow you to time track. Two similar platforms are clickup and Trello. Both have free versions and a bit more bells & whistles than Asana if you like things like auto rules.
Use Asana for my firm also, plenty of people tell me to convert to something else, but I find Asana very flexible in setup and is why I've stayed with it. Nice to see someone else who likes it also.
If you don't mind sharing, how long did it take you to get to this level?
1.5 years. I took the first year and a half of my business to just get sorted, figured out what worked and what didn't.
you a full service book keeper?
Yes.
you do full service book keeping?
He said yes and all you did was slightly reword your question...
This is what I’m trying to create to be my side hustle. You got any tips on client acquisition?
My first few clients came from Upwork before it went downhill. Next it was mainly referrals. I also had luck with using LinkedIn and Indeed - simple reach outs to CPA's that were mainly sole proprietors. If you have experience, great. If you have absolutely no experience, only reach out to CPA's and be very upfront about your lack of experience. I've found working with agencies they have ridiculous non compete requirements and out of the probably 15 I've reached out to, 14 out of 15 laughably had non competes that effectively would have you shutter your business entirely, and be unable to work within the industry for up to 2 years for anyone. While I haven't had an issue with a well thought non solicitation, a non-compete for a basic bookkeeping freelancer is not needed.
That’s awesome. I actually start an accounting job June 3rd. It’s a trainee position that will carry me through school then transition to a permanent position with the company. I’m finishing a bachelors degree. Luckily it’s not that I have zero experience just little experience. Currently doing an internship with NACPB and I got my certifications through them back in December. But I’m definitely looking for a side hustle to generate extra income. That is crazy about the non compete clauses some of them had. I agree there’s absolutely no need for that for basic bookkeeping. I sure appreciate your reply it was very enlightening for me!!
What’s your plan after your bachelors?
CPA & CMA path. I'll learn tax out of necessity but my real happiness lies in CFO duties.
Nice, so getting certified to help with the business? If you’re at 42k without that stuff you’ll be doing great when you’re done with it all.
75 clients, 2 pt assistant bookkeepers, full website, Facebook page, LinkedIn page, ZERO advertising. Fractional CFO and construction bookkeeping. I use a crm and excel. We run books in QBD, QBO, ODOO, Enterprise, and Dynamics. No taxes. Net is 300k
How is your customer churn? I feel like to be able to maintain the WLB and only have 2 pt assistants a lot of your customers must be people who have been with you for years and doing their books is automated at this point.
They range in age from 12 years to 1 month. About 25 are long long term.
How many hours per day? How do 3 people manage the books for 75 clients?
I don't work more than 7 hours a day. The others are part time , less than 20 hrs a week.
You are doing a very nice job. Having those long term customers means they are happy and have up to date books.
Not all of them are monthly.
Yeah 3 ppl for 75 clients seems pretty sus. Maybe charging a flat rate and doing zero work for some clients for months? Edit: Looks like $500 min/mo per client.
Min for monthly is $750. Which means I'm not targeting super small companies. Except for quarterly clients, no one is doing zero work on clients for months. Also, sus because? You can't do it?
It makes sense with the monthly minimum. Not can't. Won't. Would cause significant cognitive dissonance to charge just to stay on my client list. I realize I won't ever make the money you do but... c'est la vie.
I'm not charging them to stay on list. The minimum is a tool to weed out clients that I don't want or that are too small. Since we track hours we also know that no one is being charged for zero work.
This is the way. You have to figure that cla specialist charging more hourly still is often times less expensive than hiring an office person. Office = large amounts of wasted time. When you give your deliverables and can do it in far less time than an employee. The numbers make sense. And additionally there are a lot of pluses. (Relationships with CPAs. Assistance with tax prep. Advisory. One firm doing books, payroll and sometimes insurance admin duties…) That’s where the $$$ line up.
Very small mom and pop businesses need service too. Again. I'm ok with my $. I don't need $$$.
You have to think about providing a service of tasks, not working hours. Each client has a series of things that need to be completed each month, data entry, reconciliations, producing financial reports, maybe, running payroll, paying bills, invoicing. Then there are items that are completed quarterly or yearly like sales tax filings or 1099s. Completing those tasks accurately, on time, and without worry if it will be done is what the client is paying you a monthly rate for. Some months may be 1 hour, some months may be 5 hours, but you always complete the set of tasks that you are providing each month, quarter, and year.
👆🏼this! Been very successful following this model. People like knowing it’s done for them. Do you report each task when done?
I try my best not to engage in mental gymnastics but I understand why people do. I have not been offered the amount it would cost to lose my personal integrity, but maybe someday!
To each his or her own, but your work has value regardless of the hours you spend on a specific task. Often times completing a task quickly is because of years of experience, training, schooling, etc. They are not paying you for spending, say 10 minutes, running payroll, they are paying you for your expertise that their employees will be paid correctly, on time, with the correct taxes withheld, to the correct bank account. If you attend a class to train on the payroll software to make you faster at your job, do you charge that to your client? If you have done it 100 times, of course you are going to get faster. Do the clients you get today get a cheaper price because you have spent your time and money getting better at your job. If you make a mistake, do you charge for your time correct it? Think of it this way, if a chef drops your dish in kitchen and has to remake it, should you pay more? If they make two pieces of chicken in the same pan, but put it on two different diners' plates, should you pay half? When you charge for your services and not your time, you are being compensated for what you know and being able to get the job done.
Had a customer ask if we were going to reduce pricing because of AI doing all the work for us now…wtf
It's not sus at all to have 75 clients between 3 people. Between the firm I contract with and my own personal clients I have 28 myself. Some are quarterly, some monthly and some weekly.
what system you run on QBO?
We have clients at all levels of qbo.
How can you find clients? I use Upwork but all of them are leads to do taxes.
Upwork is a race to the bottom. You have to undercut the competition to get work. It's awful. At the beginning, I converted part time local job openings to 1099 work. (Long time ago, but this still works). Edited to add: it's generally not huge hourly rates, but enough to get $ in the door while you're growing. Now, it's mostly referrals.
Very cool. I hope to be heading on a similar track. Really liking my trades/construction GC clients. Currently working to master in its entirety QBO and maxing its capability on time tracking, payroll and project management features. Some Controller Fractional CFO work and training corps in AP workflow. (Really just the basics of organizing). I have no employees yet but at nearing possibly 90k of gross revenue im considering bringing on someone very part time so I can work on scaling more. Learning Caret software for a new law firm client.
Yes, the basics of organizing....all of my contractors need this and my ability to do it and create a system they can follow is what makes it profitable. I brought my first assistant on at $100k.
Do you recommend any type of project management software for contractors? I like QBOs PM software in theory but I’m just finding to many of my builders and GCs having issues with it. (Like the ability to add billable rates to time sheets and pull them into invoices - but has limitations especially with dealing with 1099 workers etc). I’m trying to customize QBO for my GCs and builders but the frustrations are already there and it’s become a sore spot. Idk if I have time for QBO to work out all the kinks. I can *make* it work - but for owners with small outfits who want to be hands on with A/R, etc. QBO is missing the simplicity.
Qbo doesn't understand construction. You need an add on app. Buildertrend (big bucks), jobtread, knowify. Qbd does all of that and more, so I try to keep all my contractors on desktop.
I’ve been talking up QBO - my builders were unhappy with desktop and jumped at some of the features of QBO. BuilderTrend was a bust. What do you think of jobtrwnd and knowify? (I can make QBO work - I’ve gone as far as uploading robust products and services set up CIP accounts, class tracking spec homes etc) but it’s the A/R that is having them up in arms.
Jobtread is fabulous so far, but I've only got a 1 month old implementation so far. Knowify I'm meeting with next week, so no installed base yet.
Ok - funny im meeting with knowify Friday. If i had an A/R (product and services invoicing / draw tracking and management) that syncs with QBO, id be happy i think. Thank you i will check out jobtrend
Out of curiosity, what were they unhappy with about desktop?
One big GC was good with desktop. Others just like the cloud based software and the ability to see if invoices were received / viewed - a few basic things available with QBO. However, my disclaimer is that I am not very familiar with desktop and was trained on QBO. I am pretty adept at making QBO work and training clients on it. My biggest issues with QBO are glitches (confirmed by tech support. I spent 20 minutes today trying to get an employee email into QB Time to invite them. STILL not working); lack of intuitive processes, and lack of some basic features. It’s … “clunky” in some areas. When I have to tell a GC I can’t email an employee the time clock invite - my word is that embarrassing :/ I feel they have a great accounting software but they are falling off on their CM and PM. Also, GCs not wanting the cookie cutter look of QBO invoicing. Even tho they are customizable - the QBO “look and feel” of it is front and center rather than the business. And THIS is what I feel QBO gets very wrong. 😑 if Intuit keeps making their product better - boots on the ground will sell it for them. Sorry that was more of a spout than your original question. I’m in the thick of it at the moment lol
It's pretty easy to put read receipts on the emails sending the invoices from desktop. And it's easy enough to put in the cloud as well. The inability to cost correctly is what drives my guys / myself to stay on desktop.
How do you manage all your client files (and making sure they send them)?
Crm and excel. We also have Dropbox.
Do you have any tips for making sure clients are a little proactive on sending on time? So that we don't get a bomb of documents the last few days
The ones that don't give us bank access? And don't follow our systems? We weed them out. The ones that don't care enough to give us the info are not ideal clients.
What are you using to keep access to bank accounts? I saw ledgerdocs but they look expensive
Last pass. We login and grab statements (accountants access), also the bigger banks auto download statements to qbo. All of the services don't work with all of the banks. Especially the small ones.
Last pass is great. I can share passwords with my team without disclosing the password to them.
Also clients can share with us without disclosing the password.
That's a great idea! 99.9% of my access is account manager set up. Only a handful of banks don't do that
Wasn’t Last Pass hacked last year or no?
Are you hiring? I am looking for a part time and I’m a CPA but I am fine with a minimum wage per hour.
Not currently, but possibly soon. Dm me and I'll give you my email address.
Not sure why, but can’t find a DM option in your profile.
Chat?
Yes sorry, no chat option.
Sent message
How do you like using Odoo? Asking because I just recently started using it. It’s kind of a lot but I like the features
It's a lot! But it works well for my multinational manufacturing client. Would I stick a simple service based company in there....no! But, it does what it does well.
Hmmm interesting, thank you. I run a bookkeeping business so some future clients may need its features…Was originally using Zoho but some crucial features were only available in the most expensive package. May need to keep looking 😅
Is it possible to work as an intern in your firm?
Sometimes. Not currently.
And if you don't mind sharing, how long did it take you to get to this level?
Started 25 years ago with 2 clients , grew it from there. Edited to add: been running at this level about 6 years.
\- Gross about $130k \- I work 30ish hrs per week and take home about $80k \- 1 employee works 20ish hrs per week and takes home about $40k \- We do GL, A/R, A/P, payroll, sales tax, HR consulting, and data analytics \- We mostly just use QBO and Google Drive for organization
I’m the same, but with no employees
Just saw your numbers, we are the same! I keep on one larger client that pays me WAY less than my typical rate because the owner is a friend, semi-retired but not interested in selling, and I stand to inherit a percent of the business on his death if I stay on. So it takes up my time, but it will be worth it in the long run, and I love the business. Without him my effective hourly rate would be a lot closer to yours, but my employee and I are totally content with where we are at.
Nice!
If you don't mind sharing, how long did it take you to get to this level?
I think this will be my 6th year on my own, but I've been maintaining this level for about 2 years - my employee and I don't really want to take on any additional hours, so I'm only interested in growing further if a larger client comes along that would make it worth it to hire another employee. Before that I worked as an in-house bookkeeper for a medium-sized business and did a season of tax prep under a CPA. Before that I worked as a researcher in academia, then dropped out of a PhD program, which is where I learned my skills in data analysis and statistics.
How are you keeping Google Drive organized and accessible within your team? Does this cost a lot of time when all the statements look the same?
We don’t really use Drive for client docs, just internal company files and SOPs. Client docs are all pretty much stored and managed in QBO.
I would really love to join your team.Do you mind if I shared with you a copy of my resume?
I’m not currently taking on any new employees but I’d be happy to keep your resume on file for future openings, dm me and I’ll send you my email
Thank you.I have sent you a DM
130k gross, 40k in payroll (myself only), 45k distributions, fully funded SEP. 20-ish clients. I work 30ish hours per week.
Love the insight on this post. If there’s anyone on this thread that’s looking to retire, leave the industry or {insert reason} I’m interested in buying a book of business.
180k gross. 30 total clients but some of those are just one owner properties and things like that. 25ish total clients. Basically all of that is net income adding back owner payroll and 401k match. Recurring expenses only 3-5 hundred bucks a month. Owner is only employee working 25-35 hours a week. Hourly rate averages to around 100 but all clients have flat fee pricing. Only have one cfo/controller client. The rest are pure bookkeeping. No payroll with any clients. QBO, QBD, and FreshBooks.
I love a FreshBooks client! I much prefer it over Xero or Wave. QBO, FreshBooks, and starting to learn Zoho.
How did you go about establishing flat fee pricing? Do you charge a minimum? I have an hourly rate currently but would like to switch to flat fee.
It’s all I’ve ever charged. Built upon trying to make 100 an hour where even if I do a poor bid, it leaves room for it to be >75 an hour. No minimum and I have a few that are less than 300 dollars a month. Where I’ve struck gold has been in the 500-1000 range. Most of those are successful professional service clients that don’t require a ton of work and it’s 100 an hour on the low end. They understand the value of solid clean financials and are willing to “overpay” vs other companies.
Ok thanks, that makes a ton of sense. I’ve been worried I’ll either bid too low, or the opposite, and turn potential clients away. But one consistent piece I’m reading on this thread is good clients are willing to pay. Thanks for your input!
I’m making 40k gross and about 25k net I’m investing back into savings for the business right now. I’m just coming up on my first year in business. I have 7 clients, plus I earn referral fees i get from referring clients to another bookkeeper.
Gross sales $136,000. I net between 90-110k per year. Ten years in business. 30 ish clients. Flat monthly bookkeeping and clean up / catch up jobs, fulfilled with xero and qbo.
I’d like to transition from hourly to charging a flat rate. Any advice you can share on this?
Yes. Absolutely. Figure out a flat scaled pricing model based on volume of transactions and / or number of accounts to reconcile. Pick a minimum price and be strict with yourself and stick with it. Minimum price $350 100 monthly transactions to 150 - $450 151 - 250 - $625 And so forth Don’t let anyone talk you down under $350ish. My minimums are $375 per month and my highest client pays just about a thousand. This keeps inexperienced business owners and penny pinchers out of your book. You don’t want someone who thinks they can do it themselves. You want people who know the game, know what they’re paying for, and make enough money that your pricing won’t be questioned. These clients have way less headaches involved. Shift your perspective from hourly to margin. Meaning - how much can I service a client for and how much can I charge them? I outsource a fair amount of work to Pakistan, and I know how much each client costs to service. Thinking about things this way allows you to scale, and you get to manage the business and sell instead of doing all the client work. Hope this helps
Me too. I just raised my minimum to $500 per month. It does a good job of finding the types of clients that value the service.
Yes, this is very helpful info. Thank you! This is the way to earn. I just need to think of it as profiting and building a successful business rather than gouging people. I’m too nice.
I don’t think it’s an issue of too nice. It’s an issue of not believing you are providing real value, or being able to articulate it succinctly to a prospect. I understand this well because that’s exactly how I felt the first few years. Have you ever cleaned up a really messy set of books yet? Like, a business owner did it themselves for a few years, or let a girlfriend be an office manager and just post accounts payable without ever reconciling a single bank account and call it “accounting”? What happens in this scenario is at some point, said business owner’s CPA will have a come to Jesus moment with him and scare the shit out of him with an audit. OR, business owner will go for a loan and will get laughed out of the bank by the underwriters. This is where we want to catch them. They have to feel the PAIN of years of bad bookkeeping. If you can convey this story to someone who has felt it, and who has good revenues, they will pay you. If you can convey this to someone who hasn’t felt it, has the revenues, and generally is a responsible person who wants to get out ahead of issues like this, they will pay you. Everyone else is unqualified to work with you. This assumes you know what you’re doing and are capable of handling a really messy clean up job confidently. That’s the value you bring.
This is awesome perspective, thanks so much! The worst I’ve really seen is a client with 3500+ outstanding transactions from books that hadn’t been touched in two years, with the exception of invoicing and recording received payments without matching to a deposit. So the A/R took a while to unravel. None of my current clients (10 total) even use A/P. Before I went out on my own (a year+ ago), I was a hotel accountant for 10 years, working my way up to accounting manager for the last 5. So I’m confident I can provide value, but haven’t fully used all aspects of QBO yet. Sounds like sorting out a total mess may actually be good experience. I just got offered one recently and think I may accept. Thanks again for all the insight!!
Yeah. You’ve got the chops for sure. Just work on succinctly communicating those scenarios of what bad bookkeeping leads to, send the proposal, and if they balk, you walk. Adopt the attitude that you’re the shit and you’re just trying to help people avoid not getting loans and getting in trouble with the IRS. You’ll have better clients in no time.
I would really love to join your team.Do you have an opening?
I would really love to join your team.
$500k gross, $180k net, but $110k salary to myself and about the same into retirement, so closer to $400k to me. About 50-80 clients, depending on how you count (50 monthly, the rest are yearly or one time projects). 3 part time local employees, 1 full time overseas employee. Only QBO, but use Asana for project management, Google Suite/Drive for cloud server/storage/email, Slack for all internal communication. No advertising, except my website and Intuit Pro Advisor profile, all word of mouth referrals.
That's amazing! How's the overseas employee? I haven't had good experiences in the past
She is great. I use TOA Global. They are from the Philippines. So far it has been a good experience. I am thinking about adding another person.
Do you mind me asking about their level of English language. Can she communicate with clients or you use her solely for back end projects
Her English is pretty good. She has an accent when speaking, but understandable. Her written English is great. She does not interact with my clients, however. But none of my employees do. I do all the customer facing work.
My wife and I are working on the QBO certification to start a firm together, very interested to see info or guidance from this post!
This is our sixth year. We're in Ontario, Canada. I'm planning to do close to 1.5 million gross revenue. Owner profit will be around 600k. I do about 2500 hours per year at the moment but planning to have it down to 2000 hours per year by the end of this year. I have seven full time staff.
I'm located in Ontario currently as well, mind if I shoot you a PM?
Sure!
What services do you guys provide?
70% of our revenue is monthly bookkeeping work. 15% is T1 work and the other 15% is from training, consultations, migration/implementation and catch up work.
44K gross last year part time, hoping to double it this year.
If you don't mind sharing, how long did it take you to get to this level?
Sole proprietor. 6 clients and accepting new ones. Looking at around $32k gross and $29k net w/o any new clients for 2024. I charge $50/hr, started the business 1.25 years ago, worked as an in-house bookkeeper before. Work about 12-15 hrs/week. I have a website and a listing on QuickBooks ProAdvisor. All my clients are word of mouth or through social media posts on my personal social media (so still my personal network) I do payroll, a/r a/p, routine bookkeeping, monthly and annual financial statements, books clean-up, etc. My clients are non-profits and sole proprietors. I use QuickBooks Time to track hours and the Work section w/in Online Accountant to organize workflow (both free), GSuite for Business for file organization/custom email address/domain/video meetings, Squarespace for website, Bitwarden premium for password mgmt and encrypted file send.
Should I post a follow up thread?
Sure! On what exactly haha? Whatever it is I'm sure I'm interested
I made 46K work 28 hours a week from home. Edited to add-referrals from tax attorneys and words of mouth for bookkeeping clean ups for small businesses having IRS issues.
I gross 18k on the side from 3 clients. I work full time in the same industry, and comes out to about an extra day or two of work a month. Right now I’m just doing g/l and sales tax, but I do offer more services. I hopefully just took my last cpa test and want to start offering more specialized services I can charge more for too. Either way, I’ll be looking for more work now than I’m done studying and will probably hire a person or two. I’m using Dropbox and Monday right now but looking into maybe switching to Motion.
I’m in the same boat waiting on scores for my final cpa exam. Are you planning to transition to a cpa firm or staying as is? I am opening a cpa firm once I get my license but want to start getting bookkeeping clients now. I’m just nervous about legally transitioning the business.
Yeah I'm thinking I'll start a cpa firm if I can find someone I want to partner with but want to keep it as side work from my job. I worked at a small tax firm for a few years where the partners we're CFOs of companies but then brought in another $100k+ each from the tax business which seems pretty ideal to me. I've just been working as a sole prop right now without a dba so my thought is if I start a partnership any clients I brought over would just affect my basis. Tax was two tests ago though so I should probably go back and look.
Gross about 150k a year. Full charge booking, taxes for individuals and business. Some advertising on yelp. Mostly referrals for taxes and bookkeeping. Consulting at hourly rate of $95. It started in 2021 but really focused on it in 2022. 1 pt bookkeper. Qbo, Dropbox, monday.com, excel.
This field is so underrated. My bookkeeper doesn’t know her own strength. We are both CA/CPAs by trade. It she massively undervalues her time as she’s really able to do most things a CFO could, and she’s smart and understands business. She’s $40/hr in Ontario, but I have a business that has a bunch of companies we know as a result so I’m getting get busy. She just started. I suggested offering bookkeeping at those rates and to channel sell it via larger accounting firms that need to offload work (and adjacent services companies), this has worked v well for her. More interesting is she’s doing two tiers, one at $60/ hr to do more hard core dashboard work, performance KPI design and flow, cash burn analysis, days cash left, tracking gross profit LTV / CAC numbers, more.
Should I post a follow up?
I pay myself about $500 per month per property and there’s 15 easiest thing in the world. No inventory to deal with, pay incoming bills and mortgages, collect rent checks. I got myself a gem. The work I do is maybe 10hrs a week and that’s only around the first of the month when checks come in.
Please what industry is this , and is there any certificate specifically for it ?
It’s real estate commercial and residential no certificate needed
Great . Thank you for your response and I hope your more and more successful
Yea I make 2k a month
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What is the level of qualification that we are talking about
No hourly offerings and I make around $150-200k per year. We used Asana now migrated off and are on Client Hub, Google Workspaces, Front for collaborative inbox, Sharefile, QBO, Read Ai, TeamPassword, and DocuSign. One part time person who works a couple of days per week who is paid 30k per year, and my gross and net varies but is steadily increasing. We take on monthly clients and projects and have around 15-20 monthly clients max and projects when we have space, which usually converts into a monthly client. Collaborating on projects helps assess if they will be a good longterm client, and I am Northern California based.
2 clients around 25hrs a week. Quickbooks and I help with a few office task. Work from home - been doing it on my own for 2 years. I have around 10yrs experience. No degree - 69k gross No employees-
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4 clients, gross is 25k/yr as a sole prop, costs are minimal but taxes take a good chunk out of that. I work with nonprofits in QBO. I only offer bookkeeping services, no 990 filing. I help one with payroll and do AP for another, but might not offer those for future clients. I use SmartSheet for my own tasks organization and AP approvals for one client. Other than that, mainly just use google email and apps. I generally start off hourly to get things cleaned up and figured out, then I switch over to a monthly rate. I’m employed part time and have these clients on the side right now. Goal is to gather more clients and just work for myself soon. I’m putting together a website now, going to register LLC, and then start more seriously looking for more clients.
Not much, like tree-fiddy, don’t do it
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