Can a Physician Assistant be self employed?

I have been working as a finance assistant for 6 years but have decided to become a self employed bookkeeper?

• I thought that gaining a qualification would be an idea before I go self employed but I am not sure if I should take the IAB level 3 diploma in accounts and advanced bookkeeping or the IAB level 3 in computerised bookkeeping - does anyone know which one would be more suitable for a self employed bookkeeper? I have knowledge of Sage, Pegasus and MYOB and have been doing payroll as well as all aspects of accounts for the past 6 years

• Answer:

  It rather depends where you want to position yourself in the market. If your intention is to provide a basic bookkeeping service to small businesses that don't have the time or inclination to keep their own records then I would suggest that a computerised bookkeeping qualification would be the more relevant but you will then be in the position of having to provide your own computer and bookkeeping software since the businesses you will be working for are unlikely to provide them for you if they don't want anything to do with the bookkeeping function. On the other hand if you want to provide a higher level service to those businesses that already do some basic bookkeeping for themselves (even if it's only listing income and outgoings) then you will find the accounts and advanced bookkeeping more useful and be able to rely on your existing practical knowledge of some very popular accounting software packages should you be faced with a computerised system, or need to provide one. In my view this is likely to be the more profitable route since it's the interpretation of the numbers which is most important to small businesses that don't have in house expertise rather than the basic number crunching which, let's face it, anyone with determination could do for themselves.