(FinancialHealth.net) – Would you like to earn enough money to live a comfortable life — all without needing to leave your home to commute to work every day? This isn’t just a pipe dream! If you happen to have a little bit of talent for math and a willingness to become your own boss, you could make up to $60 an hour or even more by becoming a virtual bookkeeper.
What is Virtual Bookkeeping?
First, let’s clarify the term “virtual.” That simply means spending most of your time working from home over the Internet rather than commuting to an office. Essentially, if you don’t have a “brick and mortar” location, you’re already virtual. You are virtually reading this article right now!
A bookkeeper’s main task is to monitor, change, and organize financial transactions, usually for small or large businesses. This includes monitoring and recording basic, day-to-day spending, accounts payable (what the business owes) and accounts receivable (what’s owed to the business). Some bookkeepers also create financial reports and handle invoicing, too.
You Don’t Need a Degree
Don’t have a degree? That’s okay — you don’t need one to get started. Nor do you need to be an accountant or CPA. While those backgrounds certainly help, the only “must” is that you have strong math and computer skills. The rest can be learned along the way.
Other useful traits and skills include:
- Business financial management basics — specifically, how the average business handles debits, credits, and billing. If you already know about accounts payable and receivable, you’re one step ahead of the game, here.
- Financial software experience — Platforms such as Excel, Intuit Quickbooks, SageCloud 50, and Mint allow easy management of finances. Knowing how to use them (even on a personal level) will help you succeed.
- Attention to detail — Bookkeepers must have excellent attention to detail in order to spot minute changes that might be a red flag for errors. If you’re the kind of person who can truly find a needle in a haystack, and then work out how to remove it safely, this just might be the right work-from-home career for you.
- Ability to read financial reports — Maybe you’ve worked in an office before. Or, maybe you once ran your own business and handled financial reports. If you understand what all of those numbers mean, and what they’re telling you, you’re a strong contender.
How to Get Started
Want to give bookkeeping a try? Great! You can get started today and begin charging as much as $40 an hour right from day one — more if you have previous administrative experience. The only real “catch” is that it can take some time to build a client list. But that’s true of any newly opened business. What you put in is truly what you get out of it.
YouTuber FinePoints recommends starting by offering your services to small businesses within your local area. They’re more likely to be in a position to need the services a virtual bookkeeper offers. See her explain how to start your new business from scratch, with absolutely no experience, in this helpful video guide.
If you really want to accelerate your progress, it may be wise to become certified in Intuit Quickbooks. They offer a full-scale remote training program here. Although it isn’t necessarily free, it remains one of the most recognizable certifications in the industry. This can help you prove your worth to potential clients, which can help convince new clients to bring you on.
~Here’s to Your Financial Health!
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