How To Set Up A Bookkeeping Business (Step-by-Step)

How do you set up a bookkeeping business the right way?

In this video, I'll walk you through the exact steps I would take if I were setting up a bookkeeping business from scratch today. We'll cover the essential business setup, the software I recommend, how to build a professional brand, and the tools you need before taking on your first bookkeeping client.

Don't overcomplicate the process. You don't need a perfect website, expensive software, or a huge budget to get started. You simply need the right foundation.

In this video you'll learn:

• How to set up a bookkeeping business
• How to choose a business name
• When to form an LLC
• How to get an EIN
• Why you need a business bank account
• The software I recommend for new bookkeepers
• How to create a professional bookkeeping business
• Basic cybersecurity and protecting client information

This is Week 4 of my 10-part series on how to start and grow a bookkeeping business. If you're just joining the series, I recommend watching the first three videos before continuing.

Whether you're looking to start a bookkeeping business, become a virtual bookkeeper, or build a profitable work-from-home business, this series is designed to give you a practical, step-by-step roadmap.

Next week's video:
How Much Should You Charge for Bookkeeping?

Subscribe so you don't miss future videos covering bookkeeping, QuickBooks, pricing, marketing, sales, client onboarding, monthly bookkeeping workflows, financial statements, and growing a successful bookkeeping business.

#BookkeepingBusiness #Bookkeeping #QuickBooks

*Learn more about my investment fund targeting 8% to 12% fixed returns*
https://www.zipcapitalfund.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to a 10-week series where I'm teaching you everything you need to know how to start your own bookkeeping business. If you missed the first three videos of this 10-week series, you gotta check them out. I go into if you should start a bookkeeping business, how to start a bookkeeping business, and how to get your first bookkeeping client. In this week, week four, I'm going to talk about how to set up your bookkeeping business. Legally, insurance, website, profiles, bank accounts, payment processor, a ton of great information in this video. How to set up your bookkeeping business. This is the foundation for your bookkeeping business. Now, I'll be honest, this is not really exciting information, but it's super important. So if you're taking notes, now is a great time. Pull out your pen and paper, open up a Word document, grab a cup of coffee, stay tuned because this is going to be some really valuable, really practical information. Let's jump right into it. Number one, create your business foundation. Choose your business name. And these are not really in a particular order. I guess you have to fit figure out your business name first, but everything else can kind of happen at the same time. Figure out your business name. For me, Harrisburg Bookkeeping. That's the capital of Pennsylvania. That's the closest city to where I live. I thought it was a really great name. Very straightforward, very easy to understand. I'm not a big fan of vague names. For example, Harrisburg Business Solutions. I don't love that. Harrisburg Business and Finance. I don't love that. Bookkeeping. And you also got to be careful. Can you say accounting or accountant or tax? You got to be careful. Every state has different rules and regulations. So look into your specific state, what you can and cannot put in the name of your business. But you absolutely can say Harrisburg Bookkeeping. There's nothing against that. And I love that it's got the location where I am, and it has what I do, the name of my services. Very good for SEO. Very easy to understand, very straightforward. I love it. I would recommend anybody, wherever city you're in, whatever area you're in, if you want to use, if you want to copy my idea, go for it. I did Harrisburg bookkeeping and I thought it was super straightforward. I love it. Create your LLC. LLCs are created at the state level. Every state has its own website for creating your LLC. You don't have to hire an attorney. Some attorneys are going to charge you $400. You might do legal Zoom or Rocket Lawyer to help you form your LLC. You don't need to do that. If you want to, you certainly can. If you're a veteran like I am, it's free to do in Pennsylvania, which is pretty cool. I created my LLC for free in Pennsylvania. You can do it digitally. Everything's online, at least in Pennsylvania. I did not have to mail any paperwork. I didn't have to go to the courthouse or sign any documents manually. Everything's done digitally. It does take some time. Took about two weeks, start to finish, for the process to get approved. So start now. Just think of a name. Don't spend too much time. Just think of a good, solid, make sense name and stick with it and create your LLC and then get your EIN from the IRS website. Definitely, you do not need to pay anybody, CPA, attorney, business guru, don't pay anybody to create your EIN. It literally takes five minutes on the IRS website. Super simple. Get your EIN, get your business name, get your LLC. And then once you have your LLC paperwork, first of all, keep that document because a lot of people are going to request your LLC articles of organization or your LLC formation documents. Keep that information. And then you're going to want to open a separate business bank account. Doesn't matter where, just pick any bank that you want to work with. I like local banks, there's credit unions, there's big national banks, they all have their pros and cons. I primarily bank with small regional banks and credit unions, but pros and cons for both. I'm not going to get into that. Open up a business bank account and then payment processor. I guess this is optional. I don't think it should be optional because you want to make it as simple as possible for your clients to pay you. So QuickBooks Online has a great payment processor option where you can accept credit cards and ACH payments. And then Stripe and Square are also two pretty commonly used payment processors where you can also process ACH payments and credit card, debit card payments. Keep in mind, almost all of these platforms charge something like a 3% processing fee. QuickBooks does, Stripe does, I'm sure Square does as well. They all charge a 3%-ish give or take processing fee to process cards, debit cards, and credit cards. And then of course, you could also just accept checks. Check in the mail, check delivered by hand. The only thing I don't love waiting for checks to come in the mail. Especially if you land a big cleanup project and you're waiting for a $2,000 check to come in the mail, checks can get lost, mail can get lost, can get delivered to wrong addresses. I don't like dealing with it. I much prefer ACH transfer or even a debit card or credit card if you're okay with a 3% processing fee. By the end of all of this, you should have a legitimate business. And it doesn't take that long. Literally, you could probably get half of this stuff done today, as soon as you're done watching this video. Think of a name, get your LLC, get your EIN, get your business bank account, and then set up your payment processor. At this point, you are legally running a business capable of getting paid. That's what it's all about. Now you just got to find clients. That's the hard part. Getting your business set up, pretty easy, pretty straightforward. Now you want to think about building your professional brand. And it starts with a few simple steps. You got to think of a domain name. So if I can give you a tip, my domain name is Harrisburg Bookkeeping.com, which is long, hard to spell, confusing, hard to remember. It's long. There's two O's, two K's, two E's in bookkeeping. You got to explain that every time. How do you spell Harrisburg? Is there an H at the end of Harrisburg? How many Rs? How many S's? If I can go back in time, I probably would have purchased a more simple domain name. I don't know what that would look like for you and your business, but think about simplicity when you're purchasing your domain name. But you got to buy one. You got to buy one, you got to pay for it every year. And then you want to create a professional email address. You can actually do all of this directly in Google. Google has what's called G Suite, Google Suite. It's like a business suite. And you can get your email address, you can get your domain name, you can get other things through Google. That's where I have my email address with a professional domain name. So my email, Zach at Harrisburg Bookkeeping.com. Pretty straightforward. And I run my email through Google Suite. So my Zach at Harrisburg Bookkeeping.com email looks just like my Gmail personal email because it's all run through Google. So super user friendly, easy to use. I love Google Suite. Speaking of Google, Google My Business Profile. Once you think of a name, definitely recommend as fast as possible. Get your Google My Business profile set up. That way you can start getting reviews. That way you can literally be put on the map and people can find you and look you up and check your credibility because hopefully you get a couple reviews in the next few weeks or next few months. Now set up a LinkedIn profile and Facebook profile, not just personal. So I have Zach Pascarello on LinkedIn and Facebook, but I also have Harrisburg Bookkeeping on Facebook as a business page and on LinkedIn as a business page. And then in your profile, in your personal profile, you can say that you work at your company. Pretty cool. You can say that you're the owner, the founder, the president, bookkeeper at Harrisburg Bookkeeping, founder at Harrisburg Bookkeeping, CEO, whatever you want to say. Harrisburg Bookkeeping, link it to your personal pages. I want it to be everywhere. Anytime somebody looks me up, I want them to see my bookkeeping company, Harrisburg Bookkeeping. So set up a LinkedIn business profile, Facebook business profile. But now, when it comes to marketing, I don't necessarily recommend using these pages for marketing. I really just have them as a landing page, as a reference page. So it adds to the legitimacy of your business, especially when you're just getting started. I want Harrisburg Bookkeeping, I want my bookkeeping company to show up in as many places as possible. My website, Harrisburg Bookkeeping.com, my Google My Business profile, my LinkedIn, my Facebook, as many places as possible. Now, once you buy a Google domain, you also have to create a website. So there are two different things. You're creating, it's almost like building a house. You got to buy the land first, and then you got to build the house on top of the land. Buying the land is like getting the domain name, and then building the house is like building your website. I, with Harrisburg Bookkeeping, I made my own website. It wasn't great, but I did it for free six years ago. It was okay, got the job done. With Zip Capital, I paid $3,000 to have my website professionally made for Zip Capital. Was it worth it? I think so. In the grand scheme of things, $3,000 isn't a ton of money when you're looking at a business for over the course of 10 years. $3,000, not a bad investment. Was the was the website perfect? No. Of course, it wasn't perfect. Did he do a better job than I could have? Absolutely. I'm just that's just not my strong suit when it comes to creative design and layout and making it look pretty and making it flow. Not my strong suit. So for Zip Capital, I paid somebody $3,000 to make my website. And if you haven't heard of Zip Capital, let me just bring it up real quick. That is my investment fund where I am targeting 8% up to 12% fixed returns to accredited investors. I am actually pivoting away from my bookkeeping business. I am no longer taking on new bookkeeping clients. I'm going all in on my investment fund. And I want to bring it up just in case anybody watching this video might have $25,000 or more sitting around in a bank account, bank CD, money market, and you might be looking for an alternative investment. So Zip Capital could be a really great option. You have to be an accredited investor. But if you recently sold your business, or maybe you're retired and you recently sold your house and you downsized, or you're just sitting on some extra cash laying around and you want to invest in zip capital, there is a link down below where you can register on my website, learn more, schedule a meeting with me. I'd love to chat. Okay, let's talk about a recommended tech stack. QuickBooks Online Accountant, of course. You need to have QuickBooks Online Accountant. Good news, it's free. Pretty easy to set up. It's free. This is also where you will become a certified QuickBooks Pro Advisor on your QuickBooks Online accountant account. Kind of a tongue twister, kind of tough to say. The accountant account. It's free. You have a login, you have a username and password, you log into your QuickBooks account, and then your clients invite you to their QuickBooks account. So I'm never logging into my clients' QuickBooks accounts. Important distinction. Cloud storage for your laptop. So everything is stored digitally, all my files, all my documents digitally on my laptop. And then I also have all of those files backed up to a cloud just in case my laptop crashes. It's all backed up. All my documents, all my files, all backed up. That way, laptop crashes, it breaks. For whatever reason, I get a new laptop, I log into my cloud storage, I'm able to upload all of the same document, download all of the same documents and files that I had yesterday. Nothing should be lost. Not a big deal when you're just getting started, but as you grow, you're going to accumulate a lot of digital documents. You want to make sure you have cloud storage backup for your laptop. Acuity calendar. So I use Squarespace to create my website. And then I use Acuity, which connects directly to Squarespace. So I use that to manage my calendar where people can schedule meetings with me. This is really, really helpful, especially as you have sales consultations. And once you get clients, your clients might want to meet with you. So sales consultations, if somebody expresses interest in my bookkeeping business, maybe through Facebook or maybe through an email or a phone call, I will send them my consultation free 10-minute calendar link so they can schedule a meeting on my calendar. Super simple, super straightforward, very efficient. Definitely recommend. And then once you get clients, if they want to meet with you, no problem. Here's a 30-minute link to my calendar where you can schedule a meeting. I do that through acuity. And then I have what's called write inbox for my Google G Suite email. Write inbox is pretty cool. I can, it's an extension added to my Google Suite where I can schedule recurring emails, which is great for a bookkeeper because we have weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual tasks that are recurring. So every month on the first day of the month, all my clients receive an email from me requesting last month's bank statements and credit card statements. Really great, really useful. I think it's like a hundred bucks, maybe even two hundred bucks per year, but it is absolutely worth it. I have close to 80 monthly recurring scheduled emails every single month. 80. And it's all through Write Inbox with G Suite. Strongly recommend write inbox for keeping up with your weekly, monthly, recurring tasks. Now for creating content, I use Canva and SubMagic. You don't have to. Canva has a free version, you don't have to pay for it, but it's only, I think, 10 bucks a month. Really helpful. You get access to the premium features. I like it. I use Canva for a few things, not everything, but a few things. I like Canva for editing images and creating infographics and flyers and YouTube thumbnails. And then I use SubMagic, submagic.co. I use that to create the subtitles on my short videos, my short reels on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. All those captions get automatically created by using Sub Magic, and that costs 20 bucks per month. Now, when it comes to a CRM, I don't have one. I don't. Some people like having a CRM. I never have had one. Maybe I'll get one in the future as I grow zip capital, but I never had one. So if you want to get one, maybe it'll be a good option for you. My perspective on CRMs, I have always felt like it just made things a little bit more complicated. I think as you grow your business, if you get a team, multiple people working for you, things get more complex, things grow. It could be helpful to have a CRM. But for me, as a solo entrepreneur, bootstrapped, I never really found a huge need for a CRM. PandaDoc. I do use Pandadoc, but also I think Google has and doc there's DocuSign, Panda Doc, Google has a feature for it, maybe Adobe, to electronically sign and electronically deliver documents. I have a client agreement. Every time I onboard a new bookkeeping client, I send them a client agreement through Panda Doc and they electronically sign the client agreement. So much better. Strongly recommend do not send a PDF to your clients, ask them to print it out and sign it. It's never gonna happen. Send them an electronic document so they can electronically sign your client agreement. It really helps a lot. Keep this simple, keep these things simple. Don't overbuy software in the beginning. I know sometimes you kind of feel like you have to overcomplicate things to make it feel like you're doing the right thing. Sometimes when things are too simple, it's like, this feels too simple. This feels too easy. There's no way I'm doing this right. It's way too simple. But seriously, take a step back, take a deep breath, keep things as simple as possible. And then as your business grows, it'll naturally get more complex. If anything, honestly, I started to make things more simple in my business because as it grew, as I got more clients, the complexity just naturally increased. So you're forced to make things more simple as your business grows to try to compensate for the increased complexity of getting more clients. So in the beginning, keep things as simple as possible and save some money. Don't overpay for software. Insurance, protect your business. I'm not an insurance expert. I'm certainly not an insurance agent. There is errors and omissions insurance, general liability insurance, cybersecurity insurance. I would definitely recommend consult with an insurance agent, maybe consult with a cybersecurity or information technology IT expert. It's gonna cost some money, but it could help have having that extra layer of security in your business. Definitely recommend errors and omissions insurance. Hopefully you never have to use it, but it could be helpful to get it. And then you want to make sure you keep your client information secure. We're dealing with bank statements and tax returns. So consulting with that IT professional or that cybersecurity professional could help establish some routines and guidelines on your computer to keep your information secure. So you definitely want to do that. Definitely a good idea to do that. Okay, let's wrap this up. Kind of a shorter video, but let's wrap this up. So now that we've gone through how to set up your bookkeeping business, as soon as you're done watching this, go ahead and think of a business name. Get your EIN, register your LLC on your state's website, and then once that's complete, get your business bank account set up, get your website, Google My Business, get your email created, QuickBooks Online accountant, LinkedIn business profile, Facebook business profile. Don't worry about making everything perfect. You've heard of paralysis by analysis. You're waiting for the right moment. Spoiler alert, there never really is going to be a right moment. Things are never going to be perfect. Just get the essentials in place right now, and then you can always fine-tune and improve what you already have in place. So that's it. That's it for today's video. Keep it simple, get the basics in place, and then next week I'm going to show you exactly how to price your bookkeeping services so that you can get onboard your first client and get paid. So if you're liking this 10 week series on hopefully everything you need to know, let me know in the comments down below. I'm trying to keep it simple and straightforward, but also really useful with some real life strategy. So if you have questions, let me know in the comments down below, and I'll do my best to answer your questions in future videos.