Tax Strategies & Preparation Articles

I’m often asked by wannabe freelancers: “When is the best time to start a bookkeeping/accounting service?” The answer’s easy: “ANY TIME!”

That’s never good enough though — they always want to pin me down to the day when the business owners are standing in line. Well, there’s not one day. In fact, you can find clients all year round. But there’s no question that January 1 thru April 15 is the time when a lot of businesses finally decide to get caught up with their finances to be ready for the tax preparer.

At Universal Accounting, we get more calls from prospective clients during these three months than we do the remaining nine months put together. So, be ready. We’re there.

Seven Steps to Make This Year Your Most Profitable Year

• Here’s a list of seven promotional tactics you should consider doing in January to spark your marketing program (or get it started) and enjoy this great season:
• Send your past contacts a letter wishing them a great new year and suggesting that this is the best time of the year to get on top of their business financially. Offer them a free consultation.
• Send your friends and relatives a nice card or letter expressing your thanks for their friendship during the past year and reminding them of your terrific referral program: If they refer new business to you, you will send them and a significant other out to dinner.
• Remind your existing clients, if any, that you have a terrific referral program.
• Visit chamber meetings or network luncheons. They always let you come once or twice to evaluate them before joining.
• Place a small ad in the Services section of your newspaper under Accounting. Offer to help businesses set up their accounting system for the new year.
• Contact local tax preparers and offer to help gather financial information from their clients if they get into a bind. Don’t forget to let them know about your referral program.
• If you are a tax preparer, send out your client tax planners now with a letter notifying them of a proposed appointment (date and time) to review their tax inputs. Ask them to call, if they would like to change the appointment. Of course, you should call them a few days ahead of the appointment to remind them and ask if that time will work out. And, it wouldn’t hurt to let them know about the referral program, either.

Make Your Service More Profitable By Offering Tax Services

During the months prior to a business filing their company tax returns is your best opportunity to find additional clients, especially if your services include preparing tax returns. The best part is that once you have the skills to prepare tax returns for the businesses that you already have as Accounting and Bookkeeping clients, it is an easy sell to also do their taxes for them, since you know their books better than anyone.

Similarly, when your service provides tax preparation services, the clients that you find that need their taxes done likely need someone to do their Accounting and Bookkeeping tasks for them as well. When you find a client for one service, you often find a client for the rest of the financial services that you offer. Typically the same businesses that do not feel comfortable enough with their ability to do their own taxes would also rather have someone do their books for them as well. This “cross-selling” makes marketing much easier on you as a business owner, freeing you to spend time servicing paying clients that would otherwise have gone into finding them.

You can now get training in both Accounting and Bookkeeping and Tax Preparation from Universal Accounting to add more billable services to your current client list. If you are just starting your business, demonstrating your ability to provide a larger number of financial services to your clients will help them to build confidence in your service. You will show your clients that you can provide a “single-source” approach to financial services for their business.