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“I have been self employed for a couple of years now and despite posting adverts, doing mailers and using the internet to find clients, I am just not getting any enquiries.

At the moment, I work from my home and my children are 5, 3 and 1, so working fulltime is something that I could not do currently, however, in four years time, my youngest will be at school fulltime and at that point, I would like to be working from home as a self employed bookkeeper for like 30 hours plus a week.  

Is this realistic?  I know a few bookkeepers but they only have enough clients to work part time hours or have to seek employment to top up their earnings.

In your experience, can you find enough clients to work fulltime as a self employed bookkeeper. 

The reason that I ask is that my husband is facing losing his job and it may be better financially for me to go out to work full time and him stay home with the children.  However, I have been studying for 5 years with the ICB but a lot of the jobs that I have looked at want AAT qualifications.  This makes me wonder whether to carry on studying for my self assessment and level 3 bookkeeping exams with the ICB or to stop and start studing towards AAT qualifications.

I live in Sheffield and the recession has hit hard here, I have dropped my hourly rate from £12 an hour to £10 recently in an attempt to get a few clients, but I'm not even getting any enquiries to give them the rates.  A lot of small businesses and self employed people that I have spoken to are doing their own books as they cannot afford to employ anyone, even for a few hours a month.

Sorry if I sound all doom and gloom, I just feel that I am putting so much time and effort into getting my business off the ground, when I could be spending the time with my children.  

Maybe someone can assure me that if I keep working hard, I will get a few more clients.  I should add that I have been self employed 3 years this month and I have my level 2 in computerised and manual bookkeeping and also my payroll diploma


Any feedback would be much appreciated

Terri”

Can someone come in on the AAT vs ICB angle? I'm very interested to hear what members thoughts are on it

“Hi Terri
I've been self employed as a bookkeeper for 17 years, and make a very successful income from it. (Turnover this year will be just under £70k!) Like you I started out part time when children were very young - working from home.   Initial flyers/letter to local small businesses etc I found to be a complete waste of time for some reason. My most successful marketing has been through Yellow Pages (although remember in my early days the internet wasn't what it is now!!)  I have a good website now, but still get very few enquiries from it - people still seem to look up Yell or the yellow book itself, believe it or not.  
Although I was, like you initially aiming at the self employed/small business, I found my clients are much bigger businesses than I was targeting with my marketing - although that did mean I generally had to work in their offices.   However, with remote working these days - you can do anything from home.   
I would agree with other posts not to lower your hourly rate, although if you are struggling to get a reputation, then it may help get a foot on the ladder.  Word of mouth is great for building your business, so just one satisfied client will work wonders.   And you have to consider what you could earn if you were working in as an employee in an office - but when quoting to clients, always remember to point out that they don't need to pay employers NIC, holiday pay and no worries about redundancy and other employment issues.
I have also got a lot of clients passed to me through the years from accountants - so don't feel you can't approach local accountants and ask if they have any clients who are looking for bookkeepers.  Some smaller accountants don't want to take on that type of work and happy to pass their details on to you. 
I must be lucky here in Scotland and haven't found the recession has hit me at all - I am still turning away clients on a regular basis because I just can't take on any more work.  So don't give up.  
Good luck
Cath”

“Hi Terri
I've been self employed as a bookkeeper for 17 years, and make a very successful income from it. (Turnover this year will be just under £70k!) ......
Cath”

“In reply to Lou's request, I am happy to give more detail for my business model.

I work alone, so as you can imagine, I work very long hours and take very few holidays to achieve the turnover I have. I offer a payroll bureau service which accounts for around £6k pa.  The remainder is mainly a good solid client base with regular recurrent work. I have one client which accounts for approx 38% of my business - I am in their office two days a week, which I am very lucky to have as this gives me a very good income on its own. (Although I am aware that if I was to lose this client for any reason, it would significantly affect my income).  In addition I have another full day each with another client.  So 3 days each week are regular. Thereafter I have clients I visit mostly on a one day per month basis, which fill the rest of the days of the week/month.  I also have clients where i work in my office on their paperwork - but because I am out working at clients every day, this means I need to spend evenings and weekends on these other ones!  Some of them are just once a quarter or even once a year. 
I don't do self assessment because I dont' want to - I really don't have time - not only in completing the returns, but keeping up to date with the latest tax legislation.  And I don't need to do it.
I do a lot of general bookkeeping but for my bigger clients I also do a lot of mangement reports, cashflow projections, budgets etc.  I find a lot of clients prefer reports to be produced to their specific layout rather than printed straight from the accounts program so this involves  a lot of excel work.
I also offer advise on software, installation and training to clients who want to do their own bookkeeping, but just need help on the IT side.  A couple of accountants refer their clients to me for this, which is good although not regular - but tends ot give ongoing support work .....people prefer to call me, and I can pop in and visit to help them out, than call a Helplien where all they get is advise over the phone which they don't understand.  Anyone can walk into a shop and buy the accounts package software, but if they don't set it up correctly, then they just get themselves in a complete mess.  So I think this is a great service to offer, and I know the clients I help think so too.  
I really do take on to much work - but it just seems to happen - although we are in a recession, three of my clients have expanded their businesses by takeovers of failing ones in the last year - and they assume I will do the additional bookkeeping.  I don't like to let themdown,  so I just do it.
I have turned down 3 new clients in the last week - all of whom told me they had got my name from Yellow Pages!  I referred them to the ICB website to find a bookkeeper - so hopefully they found a fellow member to help them.
If you have any specific questions I haven't covered I am happy to answer them.  If you would like to check out my website www.inbalancebookkeeping.co.uk you are very welcome.  And you can email me direct if you prefer
Cath
In Balance Bookkeeping Ltd ”

“Hi I have been in business for 11 years and work very much like Cath-similar turnover ,work 60+ hours some weeks and similar client base-I do self assessment as it in an area I enjoy, I have approx 50 clients , I have had staff and premises but recently decided to go back to working alone therefore reaping more profit, I have over the years tried various methods of advertising -some very costly but without much reward-most of my clients have been referrals from existing clients.
I am registered on all the free advertising sites and am lucky to have a daughter who does web design -she does my website in return for her accounts being processed! She does some excellent starter packages at very reasonable rates.
I am both ICB and AAT qualified as I also love learning and crave knowledge-already looking at my next challenge to study!
Good luck in building your client base and I agree don't reduce your rates-I charge a lot more than that and never have anyone quibble  ”

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