Bookkeeping for small businesses

Late last year I started using MYOB for keeping track of payments and receipts in the small home business I’m doing. (When I say, ‘small’, by the way, I mean small.) I’ve had some accounting experience, more on the bookkeeping level, so I found my way around it fairly well, although there some moments when I could have done with someone sitting at my elbow telling me what to do next. They have an efficient email help service, but to keep that up month after month would have cost me more than the (very small) business was worth at this point.
One of the small business ideas I had, and have temporarily put on the shelf, was to do bookkeeping for clients who find this a pain in the course of the ordinary work, or who just don’t have enough time at the end of the day. Someone else has had the same idea, and is obviously doing a good job with people like those I was thinking of, people who’d prefer to get on with the hands-on tasks rather than the paper chase ones. This guy does small business accounting using QuickBooks rather than MYOB, and has a number of tips on his site to help people using it - and his rates are pretty good. It’s given me an idea of how much I could charge, if ever I pick that idea up again from the corner I’ve stowed it in!

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