Do you want to start an accounting consulting company? Or you need a sample accounting consulting business plan template? If YES, then i advice you read on. Have you ever dreamt of becoming your own boss? Did you by chance study Accountancy and are finding it difficult to get your ideal job? You don’t need to worry because your dream of becoming your own boss and still work as an accountant can be fulfilled with little or no start-up capital.
In case you didn’t know, there are loads of small businesses, mom and pop businesses, amongst a few without the faintest idea of any accounting skills. These businesses struggle with their books a lot. Research shows that one of the reasons why many small businesses remain small and sometimes close shop is not because they don’t have clients or capital to run the business but because they fail to keep their books properly. If you are an accountant, then you can leverage on this read to start your own Accounting Business.
You can be sure that your services would always be in demand by those small businesses that can’t afford to hire a full time accountant. They know that it would save them cost and the good thing is that you can handle up to 20 clients per time depending on how organized and hard working you are. Follow these 6 quick steps and you would be able to start and run your own Accounting Consulting Business from home:
Starting an Accounting Consulting Firm – Sample Business Plan Template
1. Study Accountancy
You are required to qualify as an accountant before you can legally practice as one. You become qualified as an account by studying and graduating as an accountant from a college or university. You can also qualify as an account by writing some professional exams and becoming a certified professional.
You must become a certified public account or a certified management accountant so that you command more respect when you talk to your potential client. Sincerely before anybody can take you serious or be willing to hand over their books to you, they would want to know your qualifications.
2. Register Your Business
You would be required to register your business before you can operate in this kind of business or else you stand the chance of being clamped down by regulatory bodies. For the fact that you might be helping small businesses run their books; you would be required to register your business, because that’s the ideal way to do business in the corporate world.
Plus the fact that sometimes most of the government agencies like internal revenue agencies make it mandatory that only registered firm to handle the books of the business they deal with.
3. Conduct Your Feasibility Studies
The wise thing for any business person to do before venturing into any form of business is to conduct a comprehensive feasibility studies. When you do this, you would be able to identify the people that need your services and where you could possibly locate them. You would also get an idea of how much you can charge for your services and how much you can make as profits. With the information gathered, you can proceed to prepare an accounting firm business plan.
4. Set up Your Office
It is important to know that if you are starting your Accounting Consulting business from your house, you should be able to set-up your office unit in a part of your house that is devoid of noise and distraction. You must let your family members know when to come into your office space so that you would be able to do all you need to do and be productive.
If you permit family and friends to take advantage of the fact that you are at home and come in to see you whenever they like, they might affect the quality of your work and you would be prone to mistakes which might make you struggle to meet up with deadlines.
In setting up your office at home, you would need a comfortable office furniture (A Table, 2 or 3 Chairs), Computer (Laptop or Desktop) and Good Accounting Software, Printer, Fax Machine, Trash Can, Telephone, File rack and cabin.
5. Open a Website
If your intention is to reach out to a larger portion of small businesses that operates in your area, then it might be wise to open a website for your business. The good thing about setting up a website is that it would position your business in such a way that people from far and wide would know about you and the kind of business you do.
Good enough people these days run to the internet to get solutions to any of their challenges; and you would be shocked to know the number of people that might click your site to see whether they could get solutions to their business challenges.
Much more than going about to help small business keep their book, you can also consult for small business online. With email transaction and web chat, you will be able to achieve much more for your Accounting Consulting Business.
6. Market and Advertise Your Business
If you drive around your area, you would see loads of mom and pop businesses that are in dire need of an account consultant. What you need to do is to print your handbills and state in clear terms the kind of services you render.
You can distribute your handbills to owners of small businesses and at the same time spend time to talk to them on how they could benefit from your services. You might also decide to organize a free or a highly subsidized seminar or workshop for owners of mom and pop business and take the advantage to market your services them.
No doubt starting your own accounting consulting firm from your home might be a little bit challenging because you would have to motivate and remind yourself that you are supposed to be working rather than watching TV or doing some other stuff around the house.
However, the fact still remains that if you are focused and hand working you would become highly successful and still fulfill your family obligation. Another benefit is that you would save yourself the money that you ought to be paying as rent for an office space annually.