Starting an accountancy practice can be really rewarding. In fact it may just be the most rewarding thing that you do in your accountancy career. The joy of being your own boss giving you the flexibility to decide what you want to do and when you do it is immense. Having the ability to flex your work around other commitments can give you the work – life balance that you’ve always desired.
That said, starting an accountancy practice is not a bed of roses. It involves hard work, dedication along with the expectation that to build a successful portfolio of fee paying clients to support your financial needs will take somewhere in the region of twelve to eighteen months.
Although this sounds daunting the payback of having a successful business and being your own boss for life is high reward for the hard work.
Technical ability
Starting your accountancy practice involves much more than being technically good in your subject matter area. Having the technical ability is almost a given for anybody thinking of starting out on their own. You wouldn’t expect to take your car to a mechanic to change the brakes for the mechanic to tell you that they’ve never worked on cars before. In the same way a client will come to an accountant and expect them to have the necessary technical experience and expertise to fulfil the scope of work that they need.
Running a business
So just like any other business, running an accountancy practice is much more than being good at the service that you are going to deliver to your customers or clients – the accounts, tax return, bookkeeping or tax advice.
Similar to any other business start-up an accountant in practice needs to be able to market, sell, keep up with regulations and run the back end operations of the business on top of delivering the work that the client needs.
They are the givens – the must haves.
What’s involved in running an accountancy practice?
So, besides the obvious technical knowledge that is needed, exactly what is involved in starting up and running an accountancy practice? As a business owner, what do you need to excel at (excuse the obvious pun) to succeed.
The answer is that you’ll need to be an expert in almost all areas of business. From writing your business plan, setting out a marketing strategy, following up referral leads, converting these to clients, taking them through your onboarding process from your money laundering checks to your scope of work, letter of engagement and professional clearance. All this before you’ve actually done the work of self assessments, year end accounts, tax returns as well as other services such as bookkeeping and so on.
That’s an awful lot of stuff to know before you even invoice your first client.
How do you know what you need to do?
However, how do you know what’s required in these areas if you’ve never run an accountancy practice before? Generally, these topics are not something that gets taught as part of your accountancy training. Nor is it likely that any employer will show you how to do these things for obvious reasons.
Start an Accountancy Practice Bundle
That’s why we’ve come up with the startup bundle for those setting out on their journey of starting their own accountancy practice. This content rich bundle of courses has been put together based upon our years of experience launching over thirty successful accountancy practices in the UK.
It starts from the very beginning leading you through setting out your plan for what you want your accountancy practice through to the things that you need to do to be able to onboard clients and start delivering client work.
Here’s a list of the topics covered in the start an accountancy practice bundle …
- Plan to start your accountancy practice
- Skills assessment and how to close the skills gap
- Marketing made as easy as it can be
- Selling to acquire a client
- Create a Money Laundering Policy For Your Practice
- A Practical Letter of Engagement
- Professional Clearance
- Doing a self assessment tax return
- Doing the Year End
- How to approach incomplete records jobs
- Start Up Essentials
- Things I wish I’d known when I started out
SPECIAL OFFER
As a special introductory offer we are giving a £50 off coupon to anyone who signs up for our Start An Accountancy Practice Bundle before 31st March 2025.
All you need to do is enter the coupon code 50offstartup at the checkout and the discount will be automatically applied.
Good luck with your new accountancy practice.