Startups tend to operate on shaky ground. Look at the facts: 82% of small businesses fail due to poor cash flow. 90% of startups will fail - period.

From the moment a CEO starts pouring time and money into an idea, a rock-solid financial foundation is key to increasing the odds of success. If company owners don’t have a realistic view of their financials and are not set up for capital raising, reports, and tax prep, their dream may fade away before they ever get a chance to open their doors.

As an accountant or bookkeeper, you can help prevent startups from going under or losing profitability. The key is understanding a startup's challenges and providing solutions to facilitate company growth.

You may hear some accounting professionals talk about horror stories related to startups. Maybe startups couldn’t pay them or could only pay in equity once the company was up and running.

The truth is... startups need you. Desperately. If you know the processes and tools to help them, you and...

Increase Your Value and Boost Your Services with Two CFO-Level Accounting Tools

As technology develops at breakneck speeds, some companies are under the impression that bookkeepers are no longer relevant, or that they are no longer able to provide valuable services. You may face potential clients who turn you down because they feel a bookkeeper is a “low level” position, or try to make you offer “á la carte” services to compliment their automated solutions. Either way, you might be struggling to get consistent work or charge the higher fees that you’ve been wanting.

Thankfully, bookkeeping is far from irrelevant -- you just need to learn to adapt as the industry changes. Yes, automations can crunch numbers, but there is so much more to providing accounting services than calculations. As a bookkeeper, you’re able to offer something that is so much more valuable to your clients than anything a computer ever could provide: an indispensable, trusted advisor. 

Earning that level of trust...

Properly quoting (and collecting) accounting fees can be an overwhelming hurdle for many bookkeepers, especially those just opening up their own practice. If you don’t have a pricing system in place, you run the risk of undercutting your value and inviting potential clients to hire a cheaper (or automated) option. 

Fortunately, that overwhelm you may be feeling can be easily dissolved with a few tips and reassessment of your value. Learning how to package your services, create clear offers to reflect your value, and develop a system for charging appropriately for cleanup, onboarding, and ongoing work will enable you to confidently set your prices and find clients who will happily pay it.

How to Properly Package and Price Your Bookkeeping Services

1. Take Control and Own the Value of Your Work

Position yourself as an elite service provider from the very beginning of your relationship with all prospective clients. Your responsibility will be to lead the client through the bookkeeping...