If you are good working with numbers and have little bit of knowledge about business and finance, then accounting services can be an opportunity to work from home.

It should be noted that to provide full-cycle accounting, knowledge of national legislation and accounting as subject is necessary.

Pre-accounting services

But if you are just starting out, then it is possible to offer your friends and acquaintances the so-called “Pre-accounting” service. It is the preparation, sorting and compilation of documents before the documents are delivered to the accountant. This process is time-consuming and requires patience and the person who carries it out must be very accurate and detail oriented.

Accountants usually want to receive neat, understandable documents, or the client have to pay more money to the accountant because he has to do this document preparation work himself. And as we know, business executives are often very busy with their daily schedule, and want to simply “drop” documents without going into the details – no dates when invoices are received and paid, nor want to go into systematic order, so that everything is chronological and appropriate.

Freelance accountants hourly rates

An accountant’s hourly rate for pre-accounting plus the real accounting work will be much higher than if you offer your acquaintances to collect their documents every month. It is like document assisting work but not full time. Depending on the amount of documents you will probably need around 1 to 5 hours to collect and sort documents for one client.

What are the daily routine for freelance accountants?

What will you have to do as Freelance accountant? In short, you will have to sort papers by document group every month and make small calculations. How the documents should be sorted mostly is up to an accountant and a business manager, because each company has its own specifics, what documents and reports exist and what are the company priorities.

An example of document sorting categories:

  • One pile will be for outgoing invoices. These invoices stands for the income of the company. The documents must be sorted either by dates or customers, or paid / unpaid, tax rates, etc. You can write the code of each client and book entries on documents. You will have to specify how to sort these documents with the company managers.
  • The next stack will be invoices and checks received, invoices. These invoices stands for the expenses. Again, sections are paid / unpaid, customer number, specifics, etc. paid. Every company will have its own needs and guidelines on how to better sort documents and on what criteria.
  • Bank statements. All the documents (checks, bills, receipts, etc.) that justify the transaction will have to be put in place and you will have to make sure that no one is missing.
  • Salaries. Sums and calculations, here you should also list employee schedules.
  • The companies that use cars will have to write down the car trips (differentiation with calculations where and when they are driven).
  • Then you will have to group the prepayment checks and check which employee has paid for it.
  • Other documents can be contracts, cash registers, receipts, vouchers, royalties, etc.

All of this information should be compiled in MS Excel tables, where all transactions are easy to oversee, for what, when, the amount, the amount of VAT, the partner country, etc., that will also make life easier for the manager – he will be able to quickly navigate the figures.

Transferring this information to the accountant will make life easier and more enjoyable to work with grouped and sorted documents. The accountant will further process and verify this information and enter into a professional accounting program. Further, the Accountant will make tax calculations and submit reports to the State Revenue Service (SRS) and other government institutions .

Further accounting should be be handed over to professional accountants, as they will always be aware of the latest changes in taxes and laws, and they represent the company and are responsible for the information provided.

This article is written by a full time bookkeeper from Riga, Latvia. You can view authors website here: Bookkeeping services in Latviaaccounting services in latvia