How to Run a Bookkeeping Business From Home

So what, what's, what's something that you wished someone had told you from day one?

I wish someone had told me to, whatever you think it's gonna cost, time and money, double it.

Everything took twice as long as I thought it would.

Um, and of course, I'm wasn't a brand new bookkeeper.

I'm coming from a background where I did have experience in bookkeeping, but it was all only as a W2 worker for somebody else.

And what that meant was I show up to work with QBO access to a client.

Somebody else had done all the prospecting and discovery call and onboarding and QBO access and fetching statements.

Somebody else had done all that work.

I, being on my own and brand new, completely- Underestimated how long it would take to do all of those administrative tasks.

Um, and I spent a lot of unpaid time on this.

My early clients, I way underbid my time and cost.

Um, I also underestimated how much time I would spend in a client file when I was the only person who had my name and reputation on it.

Um, again, when I was a W-2 employee, um, and working hourly, um, number one, I had a lot more clients.

When I worked full time, I kept between 50 and 60 clients.

Um, so working hourly, I had to get in there, out of the transactions, reconcile, send reports.

And ultimately it was, if I had made a mistake, it was my boss's [laughs] responsibility and fault and cost and all that stuff.

So, um, on my own, something that would ordinarily take me, you know, maybe I would spend, at my W-2 job, I'd spend 10 minutes reviewing a P- P&L.

Well now, on my own, I'm spending 30, and I'm clicking into every transaction, and I'm clicking into every link, and I'm looking at everything two or three times.

Um, and again, the speed comes with repetition, confidence, time, et cetera.

But in the very early stages, I mean, I would run a profit and loss and look at it for an hour [laughs] before I'd send it to a client.

And again, I did not account for all this extra time that it would take me to do that.

Well, yeah, because you realize there's not another set of eyes on it, and that's what I hear a lot from bookkeepers who I'm talking with is that, you know, I, I've always had a, a boss or somebody or coworkers to go to and, um, you know, I'm just nervous to take-- what if I make a mistake? Like, what if I just don't know something that, that they're gonna be like, "Well, you should've known that." And I understand that.

And so you do learn, and you make mistakes.

We all make mistakes, and then you just learn from those mistakes.

But I, I would say that's probably pretty true for bookkeepers from, working from home, that they're more careful and they're, um... 'cause they know that once they click the button and send that report, it's all on them.