Time required to service a typical client?
Hello everyone,
I'm considering starting my own accounting and bookkeeping practice and
I'm trying to develop an estimate of how many clients we would be able to handle. I'm a CPA and will be doing taxes, consulting, reviews and compilations as well, but bookkeeping would probably account for most of our revenues.
I would hire a couple of college students to assist part time with data entry and bank recs. I'll review their work, make adjusting entries and generate the monthly reporting packages.
I'd to get a better idea of the actual time needed to handle the average bookkeeping client each month. I realize it will vary quite a bit depending on the complexity of each client, but I'm just trying to get an average.
For example, say a typical client has fewer approximately 200 sales transactions each month, they write 100 checks and there are 5 employees for which we'll do payroll. The monthly bookkeeping flat fee for such a client would be around $300, budgeted as follows:
Supervising accountant 2 hrs @ $75 = $150
Junior bookkeeper 5 hrs @ $30 = 150
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Total fee $300
Are these reasonable assumptions? If so, then a junior bookkeeper should be able to handle 7 to 8 clients in a 40 hour week, and the supervisor should be able to handle 15 to 20 clients, with time left for other projects.
On flat fee projects (e.g. ongoing monthly bookkeeping service), do you usually come out ahead (full realization), or do you fall short?
Are there any specific businesses or industries that make the best bookkeeping clients (e.g. medical offices, retail, property management, etc.)?
Also, I'd like to get opinions on what additional services would yield the most "bang for the buck" for a small practice (corporate formation services, business management, etc.).
Thanks in advance!
