Work from home in Accounting

This is an area where you will definitely need experience and/or qualifications in a relevant field. If you have those qualifications, however, you are able to do a professional level job, rather than taking a lower level job in order to work from home.

Preparing taxes is one of the main areas of work for work at home accountants. This may be for individuals, small businesses or corporations. Alternatively you could be doing bookkeeping, consulting or teaching in your area of accounting.

What you'll need is a computer and the current software for your area of expertise, along with your own professional skills.

Finding Accounting jobs from home

One option if is to look for companies that hire people to do this kind of work at home. Many prefer that you live within a particular geographic region as some parts of the job may require meeting with your clients.

A second option is to look for your own clients. Many small businesses would rather hire an individual to handle their bookkeeping and accounting than do it themselves or hire a regular employee for the job.

Most of these jobs will primarily involve filing taxes for businesses. This can make work a bit sporadic, with the majority of the work at the end of the financial year, perhaps with smaller requirements on a monthly or quarterly basis, depending on the way the business files its taxes and GST.

Your experience with different softwares, and the software you have available at home, will partly determine the clients you can work with. Being within easy reach of the client might also be important if you need to go to their office/home to pick up the paperwork.

For a job like this, you will definitely need you own work space, preferably one that can be shut off from the children, as the clients need to know their confidential information is being handled safely.

The busier times may pose a challenge in terms of balancing child care and work. You need to make sure you only take on the amount of work that suits

With small Business Tax returns, there may be the opportunity to specialise in a particular area.

e.g. when I worked in Family Day Care, a lot of the carers used the same accountant, as he was knowledgable in the business area and knew the relevant tax rules. He was also flexible and able to come to their homes of an evening if required.