Scorecard · Online
Bookkeeping for trades, remote
74/100
How much does it cost to start a bookkeeping business from home? $3,000–$7,000 in Online, on the figures below.
- Profit
- A
- A monthly bookkeeping retainer for a small trade runs $350–$700. Fifteen clients at $450 is $6,750 a month for roughly 60 hours of work.
- Difficulty
- B
- No licence needed for bookkeeping in the US, unlike tax filing. QuickBooks ProAdvisor certification is free and takes two weeks. Getting the first five clients takes months.
- Capital
- A$3,000–$7,000
- Software $80 a month, professional liability $700 a year, a laptop, and $1,500 for a website and the first outreach. Nothing to build out.
Break-even
- The number that has to be true
- 3 retainers a month at $450
- Fixed costs a month
- $1,250
- The assumption
- You can close one client for every twelve trades you approach.
Opening for less
All three together take $3,400 off: $7,000 becomes $3,600.
Start on a single accounting platform instead of supporting three
−$1,100
Costs you: You turn away clients already committed to the other two
Skip the website and win the first five clients from trade groups
−$1,400
Costs you: No inbound at all, so every client costs you a conversation
Take clean-up jobs at $60 an hour before selling retainers
−$900
Costs you: Lumpy income, and clean-ups do not renew
How you’d do it
What you need
- QuickBooks Online or Xero certification, free and about 20 hours
- Professional liability insurance, roughly $700 a year
- An engagement letter template that fixes scope and price
- A niche narrow enough to be recommended: one trade, not all small business
First 3 moves
- 1Do the books of two trades you already know for free and time yourself.
- 2Write a one-page price sheet with three tiers and send it to twelve contractors.
- 3Block two mornings a week for outreach and treat them as billable.
The hardest part
Cold outreach. The work is easy to deliver and hard to sell, because nobody wakes up wanting a bookkeeper.
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