Freelance accounting

[BrizzleM]

Hi everyone

I've been made redundant from my role as financial controller for a small company. I'm a chartered accountant. I'm struggling to find suitable part time roles (taking in to account commute), my priority is spending time with my 12mo daughter.

I am thinking about setting up as a freelance finance manager or business consultant. I spoke to the ICAEW today and I don't need a practising certificate to do that. I have gone on Upwork lots but only ever won two bits of work as I think I am too expensive.

Has anyone done this and how did you win clients? My other concern is trying to do work that I can pause if necessary as I do plan to have a second child and I'd want a few months of post-birth recover time.

I honestly think you'd be best looking for maybe part time "lower" level jobs until your children are school age. At least then you'd have steady hours and a steady income, albeit lower than you would like. If you go freelance, you'll only be paid for the hours you work, so if you want to spend time with your children and have a few months off maternity leave, you'll not be earning anything. With a part time job, you should get maternity pay if you get the timings right. There are usually jobs around for "finance controllers" in local quangos, schools, etc that are suited to part-timers and those with younger families.

Unfortunately, out in the real world, and especially in the internet world, the chartered accountancy qualification doesn't mean as much as it used to do. We now have huge national accountancy practices that are owned and managed by non-qualified accountants. In terms of interim accountants, the same applies - experience seems more important than qualifications. On internet "pay per job" sites, again, there are lots of unqualified accountants touting for work and undercutting the qualified ones. Sadly, the "chartered" accountancy market is fragmented with the different bodies and their inability to work together/merge, so the chartered "brand" isn't really that relevant except to recruitment agencies these days. If you're pitching directly to business owners/managers, whether you're chartered or not will be pretty low on their list of requirements I'm afraid.

What about setting up as a bookkeeper - I don't think you need a practicing certificate for that.

You should be able to charge good rates and fit it around your family.

I employ 3 such bookkeepers and it works really well for them and us

That sounds interesting. I hadn’t considered doing that because I’m an accountant rather than a bookkeeper but I do know how to bookkeep and the benefit would be that I wouldn’t directly do the work once I was successful. How did you win business and was your background bookkeeping or accounting?

I have a background as a practice accountant. I built up from working on my own to have 2 accountancy practices with 13 staff each

Our company hired a bookkeeper through an ad in the newspaper! She said she got quite a lot of work through that ad.

Thanks! This is helpful. I do think it might be the best option for giving me more control over my hours.