How to START a BOOKKEEPING business in 2021: ultimate guide! Step-by-step & free checklist download

this video is how to start a bookkeeping business so i'm gonna go through step by step how to get started and lots of great tips and tricks for you guys bookkeeping is such an amazing business to start because you can start out charging a pretty high hourly rate so you can start out charging like 40 an hour and then as you gain experience charge up to 80 or more dollars an hour and it also has a really low startup cost so as long as you have a computer that you can use you can do it on a shoestring budget my name is morgan from finepoints.biz and i love to help you guys get organized make sure you hit the red subscribe button down below because i have a new video about bookkeeping every single week and let's try to get this video to 4 000 likes so hit the like button also everything in this video i put in a checklist for you guys down below so check the description box to download that and i have four different sections so the first part is actually starting your business so creating the actual business structure the second part is how to learn bookkeeping and some tips about that the third part is about marketing so how to get clients and then the fourth part is just kind of some more resources and things that you'll need to do ongoing as a bookkeeper so i'll try to put timestamps also so if you want to skip to a certain part that you're looking for all right so the first part is to set up your business and the first thing i want you to do is think of a business name so take a few days to brainstorm some lists of names that you like um it could have your name in the title or just make sure you know it's something easy to understand and pronounce for some people this is the hardest part of the whole process is just choosing that business name and then the next i'm gonna have you do is create an llc or whatever business structure that you want to create so you need to legally make your business an entity so i obviously can't give out legal advice but make sure to do your own research on what type of business you want to create for me it was recommended to do an llc because it keeps your business separated from your personal finances so if someone sued you for example they couldn't take all of your personal assets so the next thing you want to do is register that llc with your state and i am speaking to people in the united states you'll have to do a little extra research if you're outside the united states a lot of people want to get like an attorney hire an attorney to do this process but you can do it yourself it's pretty easy and it's way cheaper if you um if you just do it yourself so you need to go to your secretary of state's website and file what's called an articles of organization i live in oregon so on my state's website it just walks you through the process it's all online and it basically just asks you a series of questions in my state that costs a hundred dollars and the next thing you need to do is get a business license so this allows you to practice in your county or your state or your city and that's going to vary place to place as well so i want you to check those three things your state your county and your city and look on their website and see if you need a business license to practice in their in their area so for me i didn't need a license for my state or my county but i did need one for my city so that was a hundred dollars annually so i know people kind of sometimes get confused about those different licenses so the llc is actually to form your business into a legal structure and you only have to do that one time and your business license usually needs to be renewed every year just so you can keep up practicing in your area and none of this has to do with bookkeeper licensing i'm going to talk about that later on all right the next thing on your checklist is see if you need an ein which is employer identification number and this is from the irs i left the website on that checklist you can look at that and there's certain specifications if you need an ein or not like if you have employees you definitely need one i think non-profits need them but you may or may not need it depending on your situation but again just check that link and make sure that you're good to go and it's really easy and free to get that if you do need it all right then the next step is to open a business bank account so even if you haven't started money yet i do recommend opening that business bank account pretty early on just so you can deposit your first paycheck in there and you make sure that always you always keep your business and your personal finances separated i would recommend putting an initial owner's investment into that bank account maybe like 400 and then as you incur small expenses and set up your business setting up your website you can spend it right out of your business bank account and that's just going to keep things really clean and organized for the future and then you want to get some kind of insurance so you can just call up any insurance company let them know you're opening a business and that you want to be protected and that is again in case something goes wrong with when your clients and they hold you liable they want to sue you for maybe a mistake you made or something hopefully not but it's always good to have insurance just in case and the last thing is office supplies so i recommend when you're just getting started if you're really budget conscious use the computer you have use the office supplies you have a computer is really the main thing you need i'll talk about some i'll talk about software in the next section but a computer you know basic office supplies may be a printer if you need to print a couple things you know paper pens whatever you think you're going to need but really as a virtual bookkeeper 95 of your stuff is going to be on the computer and i do have a class that i made that walks you through this process step by step so i'll leave all the information about that class down in the description box if you're just looking for some accountability and someone to really help walk you through each of these steps a little bit more all right and the next section i have for you guys is learn bookkeeping so this is key and just a note you can kind of do these things simultaneously so as you're setting up your business and getting your license and all that you can also be taking these classes and learning the bookkeeping process so don't feel like you have to completely do one and then do the next but they can kind of overlap all right so the first thing you need to do is pick a software so i pretty much 100 recommend quickbooks online and as a bookkeeper you want to get the accountant version so quickbooks online accountant so this is a website that you log into you can have a login your client can have a login and when you log into your account version you can see all your clients so maybe you have eventually you have like 10 clients you can see each of them listed right there waiting for you and see how many transactions you have to categorize for each person etc i did start out using quickbooks desktop which is a just a software that goes on your computer and no one else can see it unless you're remote in but that i think is getting less and less popular as time goes on and then the second most popular software is called xero so you can look into that if you are interested i exclusively work in quickbooks online i don't want to be learning a bunch of different programs all the time um if i just learn quickbooks online in and out then i can just serve my clients better that way so bookkeeping is not a regulated field like a doctor or a lawyer where you have to go to a certain school or get certain certifications or take certain tests and get continuing education it is not like that so basically as long as you know how to do the job you can be a bookkeeper for clients there's not like an overarching board you have to answer to that being said obviously you need to be competent and you need to know what you're doing in order to serve your clients well you can get certified through certain private programs so i'm going to talk about my three kind of things that i recommend doing to start out with and my favorite things you can also check out this video with even more detail and more options about bookkeeper certification options and how you can learn bookkeeping and then if you're still trying to figure out what does a bookkeeper do here is my basic video about what does a bookkeeper do and then just subscribe to my channel for lots more videos you can check out my day in the life playlist and also a video i have about onboarding that kind of goes through a whole client start to finish so if you're just trying to figure out exactly what does a bookkeeper's life look like those should help you out a lot all right so my three kind of favorite things first of all my class which i've already mentioned all the information is down below that is specifically about how to start your business and it is more affordable and a shorter class um the second thing i really recommend for starting out is sign up for quickbooks online accountant and then they have a free certification you can do and at the end of it you are considered a quickbooks pro advisor so that is a certification through quickbooks online and it has like a little badge you can put on your website or whatever which i'm going to talk about next but because it's free i really recommend you do that one and it is kind of an industry standard as well you can check out this video with all the info about that and then the third thing is called bookkeeper launch it is a little more expensive and a little more time intensive but if you're the type of person who just wants to learn everything all at once have tons of support and get all the information you need 100 then bookkeeper launch is amazing i've been bookkeeping for seven years now and i still learn things from bookkeeper launch they have amazing templates they teach you the basics of accounting principles they teach you how to work with clients it's like very very comprehensive so here's a video i have with a little more info about that so those are my three options on how to kind of start bookkeeping and i know you're probably wondering how much time does it take to get started until you're making money and obviously it depends on how much time you're putting into it but i would say within like three to maybe six months you could start bookkeeping and start getting clients so i think three to six months is very reasonable alright my third section is marketing so how to get your first clients and as part of the marketing process i do recommend creating a website so i use wix for my website and squarespace i know is another popular option you can probably make it by yourself and i know they even have some free options on wix if you use their like domain name um and as a part of that you can also buy a domain name so you might want to reserve that now with whatever business name you picked reserve that domain name now there's going to be a yearly cost associated with that i think it ranges maybe from like 80 to 150 depending on kind of where what you pick you could also order business cards if you think that's going to be helpful for your area and then create some kind of logo as well and like a color scheme you can use in your website so i use the program canva which is free and it's super awesome you can do so much in there i love canvas so much and then you also want to get a business email address so google is probably the most popular place to get that um and it looks the most professional if you after the at have your business name so do that within g suite within google all right and then set your price so you need to figure out how much you're going to be charging this can be so challenging especially starting out um like i mentioned at the beginning i would just start out charging by the hour so start out charging 40 an hour and then um you can raise your prices as you go along and as you get more information and then eventually you're going to want to do a fixed rate which means just charging your client the same amount every month so like charging 500 a month or 250 every month sometimes it's hard starting out to know how big the client is um you can do that a variety of ways you can look at how much what their yearly earning is and then base do your price based on that i do have a video about big medium and small clients i'll link up here and then down below and i also have a video where i go way more in depth about pricing um called charge more so this is a picture of it and then i'll leave it linked down below that one should help you out and just give you a lot more information about that but i do understand it's really hard starting out so no you're not alone if you're kind of unsure about pricing and how much to charge and then where to actually find clients so just to let you know i've actually found it easier than i expected to get bookkeeping clients because a lot of small business are looking for a great bookkeeper and they don't always know where to find it so it's just a matter of getting yourself in front of the right clients so the first thing i want you to do is just tell everyone you know post your social medias that i'm a bookkeeper i'm starting bookkeeping starting a bookkeeping business i'm looking for clients do you know anyone who has a small business who can use help definitely some of my best clients have come that way and all of my first few clients came that way so it was people that i went to school with people my husband went to school with like and maybe a neighbor who teaches piano like anything like that just get the word out as much as possible i think it's perfectly fine to start out maybe volunteering for a friend who has a small business i did that for two different of my mom friends they both started small businesses and the good thing about that is one their businesses were very simple so i could really learn the basics really well because you might be surprised at how many business owners are actually doing their own bookkeeping right now and if you volunteer to do it um as you're learning they would probably be happy to have that taken off their plate and then of course you can use typical job posting sites like craigslist or linkedin you can either post an ad that you are a bookkeeper or reply to ads looking for bookkeepers and creating a niche will also help you so say you decide you want to serve piano teachers like i mentioned before then once you get into the network of piano teachers you learn that business really well and then your clients will suggest you to their friends hopefully if they're happy with your services so it's really good for marketing and it's also good for you to be efficient with your time so you don't have to continually learn new industries when i first started i wrote down a marketing plan for myself i actually didn't even need to implement all the steps of it because i was able to fill up my time pretty quickly i do this as a side hustle so i only work one or two days a week so after i get like seven clients or something i'm filled up and i don't want to do any more and again i want to keep this video as concise as possible so if you want to learn more about my marketing ideas check out this video right here for all my ideas my last section is about ongoing things that you want to think about as a bookkeeper so the first one is setting goals making a business plan i'm sure you can look on google or youtube and find a lot of information and resources about business plans so that is just a great business practice in general you want to have some kind of contract of employment for new clients to sign so you want to spell out what is expected of you what's expected of them and how you each can terminate the relationship if something isn't working out so i wasn't really comfortable putting my contract that i use on the internet just for free for everyone to use because i don't know like the liability for that um i do give it to you in my class if you take my class the bookkeeper business coach so you can check that out if you want if you take bookkeeper launch they also give you a copy of what they call the letter of engagement which is the same thing or similar and then they also have a letter of termination i think it's called so do what you're comfortable with but make sure you're taking steps to protect yourself and your business all right then you want to be saving for taxes so when i was starting out i had a spreadsheet and every dollar i made every chunk of money i would put in the spreadsheet and then i would save the certain percentage based on my state and my tax bracket for taxes so a certain percentage and then um you need to be paying your taxes quarterly again when you're first starting out it's not a huge deal depending on how much money you're making um i have a video here that goes more detail into all of that but just think about taxes and just remember that every dollar you make is not your money part of it because the irs and one more thing that kind of took me by surprise when i was starting is i have all of these people's passwords you might want to think about using a password saving program like lastpass um because i know when i was starting i had like all these people's passwords and personal information and i wanted to make sure i had a really safe secure system for storing all of that i know those information overload but definitely ask me any questions that you have down in the comments below don't forget to like this video give it to 5000 likes and you know what if we get to 5 000 likes i'm gonna give away five copies of my class in a drawing so i'll let you guys enter a drawing to get that class if you are interested thank you guys so much for staying till the end i really appreciate you watching and subscribing have a great one

Channel: FinePoints

Views: 127,742

Keywords: How to start a bookkeeping business 2021 ultimate guide, how to start bookkeeping, bookkeeping business, bookkeeping, bookkeeper, start bookkeeping ultimate guide, start bookkeeping business 2021, finepoints, finepoints bookkeeping, hector garcia, 5 minute bookkeeping, bookkeeping business ultimate guide, bookkeeping business step by step, bookkeeping from home, work from home jobs 2021, How to Work From Home as a Bookkeeper with little to NO BUDGET!, start a business with no money

Id: QP6O6Qj6bCA

Length: 15min 45sec (945 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 13 2021