How much can be made ?

John

What is the expected range of earnings as a self employed MIP working from home, both in the early years and then once established ? (A broad estimate would be useful).

DaveP

How long is a piece of string?

soni2surv

This is a very important question for as starters.
Could somebody be kind enough and give us an idea based on his own experience or somebody he knows.
Every help will be very much appreciated.

Thank you all.

Monsoon

It all depends on your business model, really.
If you are a bookkeeper at £20 per hour and you work 40 hours a week for 47 week as year you can turn over £37,600. Most of that will be profit. Realistically you have to factor in length of appointments and CPD hours etc too.
If you're an accountant then depending on what you do, depends on what you can earn. If you take on staff you can earn even more.

This all sounds good on 'paper'. I'm still on working tax credits as I don't earn a lot

soni2surv

Thanks faerie9.
We appreciate your help.
I hope you don't mind me asking theses questions:
How long you have been in selfemployment
what are you advertising techniques
how many prospects you got per week
how many of these prospects you sign on.

I hope it is not too much !!!!!

Thank you for your help

rose

no quick answer

It is impossible to achieve 37 chargeable hours per week.
When you first start out you will spend ages just creating goodwill.e.g. if
you visit a client on the initial visit you will talk about their family,football the weather etc. The client will not be happy if you then charge for the whole time.
The general practice is to offer the first half hour free and then charge after that. In my opinion working from home you are better offering fixed fees for the
job so that when the baby cries you are not trying to work out how many minutes you spent comforting the baby checking the washing machine and
time actually looking at the vat book. Even when you are well established
the most charge out time is likely to be nearer 30 hours a week as there is a lot
of non-chargeable time in accountancy.
You have to be realistic you will not be as quick as an experienced person and working from home you do not have much status. If a client goes to a posh office they expect to pay more than they will pay you and lets face it they may have chosen you in the hope of getting a reasonable price. Your other alternative is to buy fees the clients are established.

sheelagh

Self employed work

Faerie girl's business model is ambitious.
In order to achieve 40 hours per week you would probably need to be working in client offices, or by remote internet connection 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. To achieve this you would need some fairly hefty regular work, and be prepared to do all your own business admin and marketing in the evenings and weekends. Your marketing will suffer if you try to do it all out of hours.
I used visit a couple of clients regularly, but I think you risk falling into employed status with this type of work. Not only could this cause trouble with HMRC, but it felt to me just like employment (but with additional hassles).
I agree that 30hours a week fee earning time is more realistic, with the remaining 10 hours for admin, marketing, reasearch and CPD.

Monsoon

Lol, it's not my business model, it was an extreme example! Though saying that, when I was a bookkeeper I eventually could have had 5 full days (at clients premises) charging a day rate, which is near enough the same thing. If you fill your week with regular clients you don't need to do marketing... until you lose one and then have to make it up.

For myself, I'm an accountant in practise, charging fixed fees for year end accounts. I have maybe 3 full days a month bookkeeping but the rest is in the office. I aim to do 4-5 billable hours a day, with the rest as admin.

PGM

faerie9 wrote: »

For myself, I'm an accountant in practise, charging fixed fees for year end accounts. I have maybe 3 full days a month bookkeeping but the rest is in the office. I aim to do 4-5 billable hours a day, with the rest as admin.

That sounds a much more realistic amount. Still, a busy month, 20 days @ 4hours & £20 an hour would come to £1600. Which isn't a great amount?

I'd be more tempted to go for fixed rates. Should earn more and many customers would rather pay this way.

Monsoon

My notional hourly rate for accountancy is £50.
If I was on £20ph I'd be a full time bookkeeper working 4.5 full days a week

PaulPSB

When I started out I was charging the sort of rates being quoted in this thread but if you work hard and surround yourself with decent staff you can earn a lot more :001_smile: Don't set your sights too low

Monsoon

Excellent discussion of it here. Well worth a read.