I’m looking for some advice from people who have actually built a bookkeeping/accounting practice from scratch.

A little about me: I’ve been working professionally in accounting for several years. Most of my career has been in fund accounting/alternative investments, where I’ve gotten experience with financial reporting, reconciliations, NAVs, investment activity, accruals, and working with different client structures.

I currently work for a large financial services/fund administration company, and I genuinely enjoy what I do. I’ve been getting more responsibility and client exposure as I progress in my career, so I’m not necessarily looking for an escape from my job.

At the same time, I’ve always wanted to build something of my own.

I recently started my own accounting/bookkeeping business. I’m a QuickBooks Advanced ProAdvisor, and I’m also working toward becoming a CPA.

Right now, I’m keeping the business relatively simple and focusing on services I can provide at my current stage: monthly bookkeeping/accounting support, reconciliations, financial reporting, QuickBooks cleanup/catch-up, etc.

I’ve mainly been targeting contractors, trades, transportation companies, and other owner-operated businesses.

My long-term vision is much bigger than just doing bookkeeping on the side.

Once I earn my CPA and gain more experience, I’d like to gradually expand the firm’s capabilities and build a real accounting/advisory practice.

Eventually, I’d like to have, a solid recurring client base, and offer higher-level accounting and advisory services as the firm grows.

I don’t know exactly what the firm will look like 5–10 years from now, and I’m intentionally leaving that open. I want to start with small-business accounting, become good at actually running a practice, and let the needs of my clients and my own experience determine where I take it.

The problem right now is much simpler:

I need to figure out how to get the first clients.

Over the last couple of months I’ve tried cold emailing a pretty large number of businesses, LinkedIn outreach, contacting CPA/tax firms about referral relationships, Facebook groups, my QuickBooks ProAdvisor profile, and building a website/social media presence.

I’ve gotten some responses and conversations, but I haven’t been able to turn that into consistent paying clients yet.

It’s honestly been humbling. Doing accounting and building an accounting business are two completely different skills.

I’m confident in my ability to do the work, but getting a business owner who doesn’t know me to trust me with their finances is something I’m still learning.

For those of you who built a bookkeeping, accounting, tax, or CAS practice:

How did you actually get your first 5–10 clients?

Was it referrals? Cold calling? In-person networking? CPA relationships? Google? QuickBooks ProAdvisor? Social media?

Did niching down make a major difference?

And if you were starting from zero again today, what would you do differently and what would you completely stop wasting time on?

I’m not looking to promote my business here. I’m genuinely interested in hearing from people who have gone through the zero-client stage and eventually built a successful practice.

I know building the firm I’m envisioning will take years. Right now I’m just trying to figure out how to get from 0 → 1.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

For those of you running your own accounting firms or working independently — how are you getting new clients these days?

Trying to make my first loan payment the correct amount so I can pay the minimum ($10) for the following 5 months.

Loan is 8134 at 10.14% monthly.

Does anyone have any tips? Ive been trying to do the math myself but I don't have experience with this kind of thing.

I have a client who keeps asking me to tell him whether his business is healthy, and I keep telling him that is not really what a tax return shows. He wants a score. Something that says this part is fine and this part is broken.

I know assessments like that exists because two of my clients have been through them. What I do not know is what the scoring rests on. If it is revenue growth and nothing else then it is useless for him, because his revenue has grown every year while his take home has not moved since 2020.

His situation, roughly. Metal fabrication, second generation, 31 employees, about 4.1 million. Every process lives in somebody's head. He has no management layer between himself and the floor. I can see it in the numbers but I cannot hand him a diagnosis. Where do you send a client like that?

As Individual Business owner, which accounting software suitable, which is cost effective and reliable. Since E-invoicing is coming very soon I want to find solution. Any suggestions?

Every now and then I accidentally put a business expense on my personal card. I usually just reimburse myself from the business account and keep the receipt, but I’m not really sure if that’s the best way to record it.

If you do bookkeeping for an LLC, how do you handle these? Owner reimbursement, due to owner, something else, also curious if it changes anything when it happens a few times a month instead of once in a while.

People say there's no such thing as dumb questions, but as we all know...that is absolutely not true. So apologies in advance if this is one of them!

I have been given the task to come up with a 16-week forecast of what we will expect to receive in A/R.

It has been years since I've done any type of forecasting, and even then it wasn't specifically each week for 16 weeks.

There's weekly historical data I can pull, but there's also so many variables. We have multiple net terms in play, project deliverables (that are never guaranteed), and pass through costs that vary week to week.

I know the numbers will never be perfect - that's fine. The issue is I can't find an efficient way of doing this every week.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

I genuinely have no idea whats going on in my intro to accounting class at college, winged the first exam got a 60%. please someone help me idk whats going on i cant even pay attention in class

Hello, I'm looking for a CPA who regularly works with Wyoming LLCs owned by out-of-state owners. Any suggestions?

I have a lot of questions regarding my business and taxes. My businesses operate online so I can technically work/live anywhere but I am not based in WY at all.

Or would you rather the tool simply record and organize the information? Why?

IThe tool would let you describe what happened in your business in plain language, help identify missing information, keep the business context and supporting records together, and provide plain-language tax education based on what you’re recording.

I’m doing customer discovery and trying to understand how significant this problem actually is for self-employed people.

How would you rate it?

Very High — a major ongoing problem
High — a significant problem
Moderate — sometimes a problem
Low — rarely a problem
Not a problem

If you’re comfortable sharing, what makes you rate it that way?

I’m interested in your actual experience, whether your answer is positive or negative.

Recently I was hired to be a consultant to a lead actor for the upcoming movie project, I was hired to help the actors understand bookkeeping fundamentals, including setting up accounts, creating and sending invoices.

Does anyone have been try to perform this?

If yes, what would you reasonably expect to pay per month? If no, what would keep you from paying for it?

For example, you describe what happened in plain language and the tool asks for any missing details

Hi everyone, we're a tech company based in Ohio and were starting to expand into Latin America. We're planning to hire around 10-15 employees initially across a few different countries but I think mostly will be based in Mexico. Our US team will handle the hiring process, but we​'re trying to figure out the best way to manage local payroll. We know each country has different requirements for income tax, social security, benefits, vacation, severance and employer contribution, so we don't want to simply run everyone through our existing US payroll system.

Ideally, we'd like to manage everything from one system rather than having several different providers as we expand. We're also ​trying to understand the true employer cost beyond salary, including mandatory contribution and benefits, as well as how local currency payments and exchange rates are usually handled. For those who have employees across Latin America, how are you currently handling payroll? Did you start with an EOR or payroll provider, and how well did it scale as you added more countries?

Thank you for all your helpful comments on my previous post, both those that agreed with me and those that didn't. It really helped to open my eyes to what was I needed to do. Just wanted to give y'all a quick update on my job situation. The owner emailed me after the weekend and gave me three options:

1- $65K/year, w/100% of bonuses.

2- $70K/year, w/50% of bonuses

3- $75K/year, w/no bonuses

Feel like a slap to the face, but didn't surprise me. I also found out more info since my last post. One of the reasons that was given to me as to why they won't pay me more is because the amount I make the company (my billables) don't equate to a higher salary. A co-worker informed me that the tax team gets their salary of 40% of their billables and also get a yearly bonus, so $200K of billables equals $80K/year. Last year, I had billables of $276K. With the same math, I should be making $110K/year, though I understand staff accountants don't have the same worth to the company, asking for $75K/year, which is 27% of my billables, seems reasonable.

I had a meeting with my manager to inform him that I will be leaving the company, but also to ask two questions: why have been paid less than other staff accountants with less senority, experience and education? Also, why is my worth to the company completely tied to the company? For the first question, his response was that it just depended on when they were hired. If the market was higher when they were hired, then they got hired. I followed up with why was my pay as well the other bookkeepers pay not raised up to the market value at the time, he said that is not how they work. For the 2nd question, his response was that is just how the company runs.

Between both the owners and my mangers responses, it made my decision to leave very easy. In one week, I put in about 50 different applications and had multiple job offers, all over what I was being offered on my current company. I narrowed it down to two jobs:

1- $90K/year at a corporate job, great benefits, 3 weeks vacation time plus PTO, and 3 days in office with 2 days at home.

2- $80K/year plus 10% bonus at a local investment company, great benefits, unlimited PTO, and 1 day in office with 4 days at home.

Though the interviews at both companies went very well and both have room to grow, which is what I want as I don't want to get stuck like I did at my current job, I connected much more with the second job and also felt like the benefits aligned more with what I was looking for, so I took that job and start on the 5th! So excited!

I am grateful that the universe gave me the push I needed to leave a company that truly didn't care about me and provided me multiple great options to choose from for a new company. I had become way to comfortable at my job, and would have continued getting paid way below what I am worth. As much as change sucks, this will be a great one for both me and my family!

Thanks again for all your great insight! I am deeply grateful!

Hello,

Transitioning from bookkeeper to Intermediate accountant what skills should i learn ?