Starter Kit. Idea 298 of 500. Cluster 15

Accounting and bookkeeping outsourcing for small British and Australian firms, in their time zones

Back to the idea

Written for this site as a starting point, not from the book. Rules and fees change: ask the bodies named below before you spend money.

The mechanism, from the book

The proof exists in Malabe. What is missing is a thousand small versions of it.

The first step

Write to 30 small accounting practices in Britain and Australia offering to do one month's bookkeeping for one of their clients at a trial price, working in their hours. Include your qualifications, the software you use, and how client data is kept secure. A single trial client, and the practice's view of your work after a month, is the proof and your first reference.

Who pays first
A small British or Australian accounting practice with more bookkeeping than staff, which pays per client per month for reliable work in its own hours.
What leaves today
Trained accountants leave to do this work abroad, when the same work could be done from here with the fee paid into the island.

Ask first

  • Data Protection Authority. Ask what you must do to hold personal and financial data for clients abroad.
  • Inland Revenue Department. Ask how fees from foreign accounting practices are taxed and invoiced.

Check before you spend

Which qualifications the practices abroad expect, how client data must be stored and protected, and whether their own regulator lets them send work overseas.

Find out these three numbers

  1. What does a practice abroad pay per client per month for bookkeeping?
  2. Which accounting software do small practices in Britain and Australia use?
  3. How many hours a month do one client's books take?

A comparison from the book

The four rules for all five hundred. Appendix

"Provide a good service, charge properly for it, and let the money follow."

Price the work at what it is worth to the firm abroad, and never apologise for the price.

The test

Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?

WITH500BUSINESS IDEASTO STARTTOMORROW

From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.