In our digital age, more and more of you with accounting degrees are choosing the path of freelancing. To freelance means that you are not an employee, but are considered a contract worker, and will receive a form 1099 at the end of the year with a record of monetary payment made to you by your accounting clients. Many freelance accountants never even meet their clients. Their work is all digital, and contact is made through phone, email, and by taking advantage of online solutions for sharing information with clients.
If you are considering becoming a freelance accountant, the Rules of Thumb blog from MoneyThumb would like to share the following pieces of advice with you on getting started:
How to Become a Freelance Accountant
Of course, to become a freelance accountant, even though you will not have a boss other than yourself, there are still certain qualifications you need. Those qualifications, along with some suggestions for making your freelance accounting business successful, include the following:
- Bachelor’s degree in accounting or a business degree
- Accounting courses would be an added benefit
- Financial Software such as QuickBooks, M.Y.O.B., would help
- In case of attaining Certified Public Accountant (CPA) certification, ensure that your bachelor’s degree has the sufficient number of training hours in accounting as a basic requirement for certification
- Your sub specialization should be from the public, management, internal, government accounting or internal auditing
- Register yourself on websites that offer accounting assignments. Make your own blog to advertise your service and stay updated on the industry information
- The internship would be an added advantage to you
- Gain familiarity with advanced computer applications that help in an accounting process
As a freelance accountant, you still have certain responsibilities, and perform the same basic tasks as an accountant who is on a payroll. The following are the few responsibilities of a freelance accountant:
- Recording and saving data in regards to profits, loss, tax, pending bills, tax, sales and other similar transactions in a timely fashion
- Tallying the accounts on a daily, weekly or monthly basis
- Calculating the details of tax returns
- Drafting financial statements to clients
- Make sure that all financial laws practiced by the company are legal
- Taking care of the administrative tasks of your own business
Probably even more than accountants who are employees of a firm or hired as a regular worker for clients, a freelance accountant needs to always make sure they are staying on top of continued education. To help you accomplish this goal, we would like to share the following upcoming free online accounting conference presented by CPA Practice Advisor which begins on December 6, 2018. This is a huge event, one of the reasons the Rules of Thumb blog from MoneyThumb is sharing it so early in the year, so that you can make sure you clear your schedule on that day to attend.
The conference is called Ensuring Success and you can earn as much as 10 free CPE credits if you attend all of the sessions. Below are the details of the Ensuring Success Accounting Conference from the CPA Practice Advisor announcement:
Meet year-end CPE requirements from the comfort of your office.
No travel, no hotels, no rushing from one session to the next.
Join an outstanding lineup of some of the accounting profession's most innovative and creative thought leaders as they present 10 back-to-back one-hour educational sessions, discussing the latest trends and concepts and providing concrete tools and takeaways that will help ensure the future success of your practice. Through the use of various social media techniques, you can participate interactively with the speakers and other attendees just as if you were in the same room. CPA Practice Advisor is an approved NASBA and IRS continuing education provider.
This free conference is a great free opportunity for freelance accountants to keep up with the latest accounting information and earn free CPE credits. Another great boon to freelance accountants that makes their freelance business rock is the use of the best PDF financial file converters on the market. By using these MoneyThumb tools, you are enhancing your freelance game to the max.
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