Self employed book keeper

[Beansprout30]

I’m currently studying AAT and am about to start a finance assistant position, this will be my first role in finance, in a few years I’d love to be able to do some self employed book keeping work, but I’m wondering how much experience id need to go it alone, would a finance assistant role put me in a good position for enough experience? Any tips or advice from anyone who already does this? Thanks

What helped me after working in accounts departments for many years was to do some short-term temping work at an accountancy practice. I got a useful overview of a variety of different industries and set-ups very quickly.

An in-depth understanding and working knowledge of nominal coding structures and management reporting would be very useful. As a self-employed book-keeper you will often be asked by a new client to either sort out their current system (which will be in a total mess), or to implement a new one. Your client will know absolutely nothing about why things need to be done a certain way, and will often question why all the flipping time. You just have to convince them that they are paying you to do the job because you know how to do it and they don't

As well as needing to know about Ltd company accounts, you would need to know about sole traders and partnerships as well. And payroll would be pretty handy too, not to mention a working knowledge of VAT and cobbling together a reasonable set of accounts from incomplete records. The theory is one thing - doing it for real is something else entirely!