10 Essential Tips to Help You Get More Bookkeeping Clients

Although this isn’t a path to vast riches, you’re providing a valuable service to small business owners. Doing this poorly can cause some real harm to their business. Make sure you’re upfront about your experience (and lack thereof) when using these steps. I know it means the pay won’t be great for the first year, but building that trust will pay off. A lot of your future referrals will come from your current and past clients. Find out if there are any Chamber of Commerce meetings, industry groups, industry conferences, or similar happening near you.

AutoEntry means clients can snippet pictures of expenses, while on the go using their mobile phone. The accounting data is automatically extracted, and it then comes to your desktop, where you can then process it and publish it through to the client’s ledgers. From your own perspective, you need to figure out how this new client will fit into your personal deadlines. For example, for the VAT returns I handle each month, all of my client returns need to be completed and submitted by the 15th.

Tips on How to Get Bookkeeping Clients

Those accountants that have gone niche have noted that when they become known as the experts of their area, they can charge the value-added fee for a high-quality service they provide. A good investment is business insights software that offers actionable reports based on your client’s financial data. Software like Synder Business Insights provides reports that are updated every hour, ensuring you have the most relevant information. It might be a surprising idea, but these two groups of people often see accounting services differently and have different expectations.

• When you share your expertise without asking for anything in return, it builds trust and convinces prospective clients without selling.
• Often, these top-tier checking accounts are available to customers once they reach more substantial balance levels.
• With a solid online presence, we can boost your visibility and get you more clients.
• So what can you do to increase your success rate with new clients, then, is the next question?
• Besides motivating them to refer you, it reinforces your value.

Accounts payable are usually what the business owes to its suppliers, credit cards, and bank loans. Accruals will consist of taxes owed including sales tax owed and federal, state, social security, and Medicare tax on the employees which are generally paid quarterly. Long-term liabilities have a maturity of greater than one year and include items like mortgage loans. Companies also have to set up their computerized accounting systems when they set up bookkeeping for their businesses.

Businesses looking for bookkeeping and accounting services

Although most of your clients refer your business to potential customers for free, establishing a referral program for your existing clients can be a smart move. Some bookkeepers choose to obtain certifications for their business. Bookkeepers can be certified in various financial platforms, such as QuickBooks, or via training programs. You can also choose to become a certified public bookkeeper to market yourself better as a bookkeeping professional. If you are a ProAdvisor for QuickBooks Online, Intuit has a database or directory that you can join that people all across the country, or even across the world, can look up bookkeepers.

If you start creating and building your influence online today, your practice will be in a better position a few years from now. Kimberli Stephenson has a podcast called The Bookkeeper Basecamp. She invites expert bookkeepers to share the strategies that help businesses achieve their dreams. Once you have created your posts, it’s time to start sharing. There are several tips and tricks to sharing your content efficiently, but you’ll only truly understand what suits your brands by doing.

Step 5. Attend public speaking events.

If you know enough to do good work but just can’t find bookkeeping clients, you should start by offering your services for free or at least highly discounted. Explain that you’re trying to gain experience and that you’d like to prove your value by working for the first three months for free. They’re getting free bookkeeping as long as they don’t “get what they paid for.” This first client is your advertising, how to get clients for bookkeeping so spend the time to do your best work. This makes searching for accounting services easier for prospective clients as well as works great for you since you both are working with the same software, making your job that much smoother. You can look at freelance sites, such as Upwork, to see what others are charging for bookkeeping services, but you can also learn a lot by asking around.

By adding this ask to the process for each new happy customer, you’ll be bound to increase your online reviews and improve your accounting firm’s reputation online. However, when it comes to marketing your business and selling your accounting services, that might be a different story. External engagement is a very new technique to attract clients.

In Close, you can set up email sequences to follow up automatically with leads that have gone dark. Do you have a list of people who promised to call you back but never did? Of course, to make sure your ads are providing a decent ROI, you need to make sure you have clear, specific customer profiles.

Always verify the legitimacy of the client and avoid sharing sensitive personal information. With the right approach, Craigslist can be an effective, low-cost tool for securing new bookkeeping clients. In sum, LinkedIn is not a tool to ignore in your quest for clients. It requires a consistent, active approach, but the potential rewards for your accounting firm are immense. Over time, as you gain experience, and get to know the kind of work and clients you most enjoy, you can begin to narrow down and specialize.