Is it possible to do bookkeeping self employed without employed experience?

[BackieJerkhart]

I hope that title makes sense!

I was doing accounting at university (first year) but family circumstances changed and I had to pull out of my course. I'm not in a position to go back to university yet or to take up a full time job anywhere but I think I could do book keeping from home after doing an AAT course.

Is that realistic or would I definitely need workplace experience before setting up on my own as self employed?

Any advice greatly appreciated.

You don't need to have it, but it helps to get a working understanding of accounting software etc. I found I learned so much from different companies that it made me more confident.

Technically, anyone can call themselves an 'accountant' or 'bookkeeper' even if they have no qualifications.

If you do AAT, they will also offer reduced price professional development, and insurance. You will need insurance in case you get sued.

90% of bookkeeping is simple, it is the harder 10% that are the issue.

If you are just looking at keeping track of small business sales and purchase invoices, and then handing the year end taxes over to a legit accountant you should be fine.

My DM did this. She did level 2 AAT and dropped out of L3 as she already had the bookkeeping work she wanted.

Thanks everyone, it's good to know it is possible. I would prefer to get workplace experience and if I could find a part time role I will but what I have been finding is all full time roles and they all require experience!

So for someone in my situation is there a specific course I should be doing? Or do I just start at AAT level 1?

My local college has a C&G accredited course in bookkeeping but I am guessing AAT is preferred?

Go through the ICB courses rather than AAT - I'm currently retraining and this was the advice given to me by a bookkeeper who's been self employed for 25 years. Good luck!

I did city and guilds bookkeeping level two and was accepted onto AAT level 3 from this. After completing AAT 3 you can be an AAT qualified bookkeeper and get the support to set up from home. You can also work as a self employed bookkeeper but get your work from an accountancy firm who outsource some of their bookkeeping.

Ok, having looked again, the course at my local college is called "level 2 award in computerised accounts" and accredited by city and guilds. But this doesn't say bookkeeping so it's not the course I want?

I would say it's good to know how to do accounts on a computer, but it's better to have a grip on the basics of bookkeeping and how double entry works first, so I would advise a bookkeeping theory course first, or get the AAT level two course book yourself - the bpp one is good and you can work through it on your own and there's questions and answers in the book.

You may already have this knowledge from your uni course though? Also look at tutorials on YouTube - I did this with Sage before I started working with it.

Thank you sunshine this is really helpful.