There are a lot of career opportunities for someone who knows to manage the books. Accounting is a skill that every business has a need of. Yet, there are plenty of business owners who don’t have the patience, the attention to detail or the analytical skill for it. Which means there’s plenty of market for those who do. However, if you’re taking your money smarts into business with you, why stay satisfied with acting as an in-house accountant? Why not get a bigger slice of the pie for yourself and start your own business as a financial guru?
Know what you want to be
Before you start shouting to the world about the business that you want to open, you need to be sure on what you’re able to provide. The amount of time, manpower, and experience at your disposal is going to make a big difference. You might not have the qualifications that would allow you to legally do some tasks, for instance. You might very well be perfectly happy with the bookkeeping tasks that a lot of businesses use to make sure their accounts are accurate. You might want to get into deeper territory regarding taxes and audits. But you need to decide that before you move ahead.
Get legit
You need to decide what realm of business you’ll get into because they need different preparations, as we’ve mentioned. In particular, getting certified and qualified. You don’t need any qualifications to start a looser operation of bookkeeping for businesses, for instance. However, it can be very helpful to have certification from a body like the Association of Accounting Technicians. Then, if you do want to get into the more involved business of dealing with taxes and audits for a business, you need to get even more qualification. To that end, you should be looking at places like the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants. For those who want to make a really lucrative career out of their skills, becoming a Chartered Accountant is a much safer bet.
Take care of your own books first
Naturally, an accountant needs to have a very tight hold on their own finances if they’re going to stay open long enough to convince anyone to become a client. If you’re working as a freelancer or contractor, it’s a lot simpler to set up your business as a separate entity, for one. That makes it a lot easier to keep your business and personal finances separate. Which means it will be significantly easier to deal with taxes. You don’t have to run through every claimed expense with fine-toothed comb, provide which is personal and which is business related. You should also take advantage of opportunities to improve your finances, like the Employer’s National Insurance Allowance.
Create a strong business
Your skills aren’t the only things that make the business, either. You need to set up a range of systems that work together to make the whole complete. For instance, you need to start thinking of branding, from website design to the unique value proposition of the business. You need to think about how you deal with the tech side of business, too. Just because you’re a financial whizz doesn’t mean you’ll be operating entirely within your comfort zone. However, there’s help on hand, like specific IT support for financial services. If you have any intention of employing anyone else to work with you, then you need to start looking at employment law and setting up a code of conduct for the business, too. The quicker and more thoroughly you start laying the groundwork, the sooner you can get running.
Create a stronger work ethic
As strong as the groundwork of the business needs to be, the person at the centre of it all needs to be able to carry their own weight and then some. When we talk about a stronger ethic, we’re not just talking about getting motivated. We’re talking about how your organize your efforts and prioritise the different tasks involved in running a business. To that end, there’s no skill more valuable to learn than time management. Without learning how to separate, prioritise and tackle tasks in a time-efficient manner, you’ll have trouble keeping up with the demands of business.
Get marketing
There’s no other way to say it. If you’re starting an accountancy business, you are already going to have some steep competition. Yet even the new kid on the block can be tremendously successful with the help of a strong marketing plan like the one you can find on Get App. From generating leads to helping yourself stand out beyond the rest. For the latter point, one of the key tactics is to carve a niche for yourself. You need to look at what the others in your market are doing. Learn from what they’re doing right, but also look at what they put less of a priority on or what they’re missing entirely. It might be a certain sector of the market or a service you’re able to put more of an emphasis on. Marketing in accountancy needs to go deeper than it goes broader.
Flex your expertise
Regardless of what that depth is, people want to know that their accountants know what they’re talking about. Everyone has need of the financial sector. From business owners to homeowners or people just looking to improve their financial standing. By applying the logic you use in your work every day, consider writing content that you can host online. Not only will this help you build your profile as a money expert. But it can even help you build new revenue streams. People might pay to download your strategies or even an e-book that helps them take control of their finances for the rest of their life. You don’t always have to work one-on-one with someone to make them a customer.
There’s a lot more that goes into running a business than what we’ve mentioned here. However, we want to ensure that we’ve highlighted the serious career potential for those with bookkeeping skills. We hope we’ve given you a glimpse at how you can get there.
