You are an accounting graduate or have skills in bookkeeping and you want to get serious about starting a business then this is for you.
According to a 2018 report published by (Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Kenya (ICPAK) and Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) on Drivers of Change and Future Skills in Kenya, accountancy profession and skills are and will be the most needed by businesses and institutions in the future.
Indeed, Kenya has the largest economy in East Africa, and the accountancy profession in the country has played a key role in supporting the country’s economic growth.
However, of concern are small businesses which are held back by a failure to exploit fully the skills of accountants.
Here is where a business opportunity lies for you because some of these small businesses are side hustles mostly managed by entrepreneurs who are engaged in some full-time employment and do not have enough time to record their financial status.
At the same time, they are shy of sourcing a well-established audit firms to do bookkeeping for them as the business is still small and hiring an audit firm can even be more expensive.
In fact, they consider hiring bookkeeping freelancers in Kenya as quite affordable as compared to a full-time employee as they believe they can save up to 50 per cent in business cost by hiring bookkeeping freelancer.
This has made bookkeeping and accounting perhaps one of the most in-demand services in town that small businesses will farm out to part-time freelancers and you can be one.
All you need is your skills in bookkeeping and the ability to work with various software. Sometimes these skills might not be found in school but career experience where you get to learn on the job can serve better.
And because these days getting an internship, whether paid or unpaid, is not easy, this is why you need to start with the small businesses where you can gather the experience and get some income to improve your skills in future maybe by registering for computerized accounting classes where you can learn the use sophisticated software such as Sun, Oracle, MC, Turnquest, Sage-Pastel and QuickBooks that bigger companies are now using.
While the best and cheapest way of making yourself known by those who need bookkeeping services is via social media where you may use some little cash to place an ad and also through friends, registering with some online space such as Truelancer.com can be of great help.
Though, in Kenya audit firms charge Sh430 per hour for their bookkeepers, you can charge Sh200 per hour since most of these small businesses do not much data to work on other than daily sales and stock.
At this rate, you only need about 10 individuals or businesses in town and you will be sure of Sh2,000 per day and Sh10,000 a week assuming you work for five days.
Bryan Kwena, is one of the renown bookkeepers in Nairobi. He says he has been, for over 10 years worked with small business entrepreneurs just for bookkeeping services.
“Most of these guys do not know how to keep their financial records and to make matters worse a good number of them are not in touch with their businesses on a daily basis, making bookkeeping a selling service in town,” said Bryan.
He has about five permamnet clients whom he services on a daily basis for about three hours each and he chargers Sh200-400 per hour depending on the scale of the business.
You can be like him, just be a go-getter.
