Find Your Ideal Virtual Assistant Niche: Bookkeeping
Thinking of Hiring a Virtual Assistant?
It’s time for another in-depth look at selecting a specialization for your virtual assistant business, and in this piece, we’ll be taking a look at the virtual accounting services that are available.
We are quite excited about this series of postings since, in our opinion, overcoming this obstacle is one of the most significant hurdles that new virtual assistants have when they are initially starting their businesses.
Indeed, this is without a doubt one of the most difficult aspects.
We thought it would be helpful to provide you with some guidance as you navigate the process of picking a specialty by providing a comprehensive overview of some of the most prevalent niches. We intended to provide answers to the same important questions across a wide range of subject areas so that you could make an informed and self-assured choice without spending an excessive amount of time doing so.
Are you prepared to take a more in-depth look at the market niche of virtual bookkeeping, which has the potential to provide extremely high profits?
Is Bookkeeping The Right Niche for You?
The selection of a target market that allows for a healthy balance of passion and profit is a process that combines art and science.
If you have too much of one and not enough of the other, it is almost certain that you will need to make adjustments down the road, whether it be to the kind of customers you deal with, the way you organize your services, or even your niche in general.
Even while it’s nice (and vital) to like what you do for a living, it’s even more crucial to be able to turn a profit from it. Not simply a pay sufficient for subsistence, but also a genuine profit for your company after you’ve accounted for all of its costs and paid yourself.
If you’re considering starting your own virtual assistant company and one of the potential niches you’re considering is virtual accounting, it’s a fair guess that you like dealing with numbers. And that the fact that, on sometimes, you’ll spend hours seeking for a missing twenty cents when it’s time to reconcile accounts does not in the least bit affect your opinion in any way at all.
When it comes to numbers, having some “cents” of common sense and having confidence are both very necessary. Your ability to identify possible issue areas or errors will pay big benefits for both you and your customers.
You’ll also need to have full confidence in your ability to operate at least one of the several accounting software programs that are presently available, such as Quickbooks, Xero, or Sage Accounting, to mention just a few examples.
Services & Tasks You Can Perform as a Bookkeeper
Bookkeeping services might seem quite different depending on the requirements of the customers using them. At various points during the year, you can also find yourself tasked with doing a variety of other kinds of activities. Some instances are as follows:
- The process of entering payables and receivables
- Carrying out the task of monthly financial reconciliation.
- Recordkeeping and filing of sales tax payments
- Contributing to the preparation of year-end reports
- Contributing to the understanding of financial statements
- Taking care of overdue accounts and bills.
How To Find Potential Clients
The practice of preserving financial records digitally provides access to a wide range of possible sub-niches, some of which may appeal to you. You have the option of specializing in the provision of services to a subset of clients or businesses in addition to the services that are on the preceding list.
You may, for instance, make the decision to concentrate on fitness centers and individual trainers. Or maybe you like to collaborate with people who are successful in the medical or online business fields. There is a large amount of leeway for customization as well as a plethora of choices to choose from.
Not only are there various categories of customers, but there are also a great deal of different kinds of sources. You may do a search on Linkedin among members of your target market, or you could join a local business networking club in your area.
Setting Your Rates
If you browse the internet for a short period of time, you will discover a range of sites that indicate toward an average hourly pay of around $20 US Dollars. However, it is not at all rare for websites that use pay scales to publish values that are on the low side of the range.
We consider an hourly fee of between $40 and $60 to be more average, and this range is unquestionably in the ballpark of what we pay our bookkeepers.
It is essential to keep in mind that, just like in any other area of virtual assistance, you will be able to increase your rates over time as your expertise and reputation expand. You may begin at a rate of $30 per hour and quickly work your way up to a rate of $60 per hour in just a few short years.
How to Learn Job-Specific Skills and Acquire Some Prerequisite Knowledge
When it comes to education, there is a wide variety of accessible alternatives, including membership in professional organizations.
You are welcome to pay a visit to the American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers if you are a resident of the United States. There is an organization known as the Institute of Professional Bookkeepers of Canada in Canada, and there is also an organization known as the International Association of Bookkeepers that can be found over the pond in the United Kingdom.
If you are seeking for skill-specific training and in-depth understanding about how to develop a company in this specialized field, another program that comes highly recommended by us is called Bookkeeper Launch.
We are unable to think of a better location for you to begin your business education if you are interested in acquiring accounting skills that are unique to starting and operating a lucrative bookkeeping firm. The investment is required, but since the service is in such high demand, the amount of time it takes to make back your initial investment is rather quick.
Your First Steps to Get Started
Consider the following two possible situations if you are interested in offering accounting services but are unsure how to get started or what your next steps could be:
- You’ve already got some experience as a bookkeeper.
You may have been working as an employee or you may have been handling the books for your family’s company for the last five years. Either way, you have been gaining valuable job experience.
In any case, you have a solid understanding of what it takes to be a bookkeeper, and you are convinced that with a little bit of business training and some careful preparation, you will be able to have your freelance accounting firm up and running in no time at all.
You will come away from going through the VA FLIX System with a rock-solid grasp of what it takes to begin, grow, and expand your own virtual assistant (VA) firm. It is up to you to decide whether or not you wish to seek extra training that is more specialized.
- You’re confident that bookkeeping is right up your alley.
You can be new to keeping books, or you might have some experience under your belt already. You only need some training that is particular to your field, and then you’ll be ready to compete.
You have the ability to build your company to whatever size you like, just as you would with any other specialization in the virtual assistant industry, or you can keep it small and manage only a few customers at a time. The only thing you need to do is think about what you want to get out of working with us, and then put in the effort to make it happen.
Are you prepared to take your company as a virtual assistant to the next level and locate your perfect specialization? Join VA FLIX and let’s get this done together!