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November 12, 2007
by Rick Telberg/At Large
If you’re reading this in your pajamas, you’re not alone. In fact, you may be a fairly typical CPA. Tax and accounting professionals, you see, are a fairly home-oriented bunch of people.
The vast majority of CPAs work at home, for one reason or another, at one time or another. They may be taking work home with them. They may be operating full-time or part-time businesses. They may be moonlighting after their day jobs. Or a little of all of the above. What are you doing?
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How do CPAs succeed while working at home? |
And why not? In addition to the attraction of your favorite bathrobe and slippers, there’s the money. In fact, considering the convenience and low overhead, many CPAs seem to prefer working at home. Because Broadband and wireless are revolutionizing the way people live and work, home-based accounting practices appear to be proliferating.
In fact, CPAs are more likely than not to be working from home. It’s a trend we’ve been following for some time. So far, more than three out of four CPAs in our surveys (79%) are working from home at least five hours per week, including almost a third (29%) who work from home essentially full time, more than 35 hours per week.
Gayle Simmons, a public practitioner in Phoenix, Ariz., advises CPAs contemplating an at-home practice to “Have room for employees and quick expansion.”
And they seem to be enjoying it.
“Try it, you will love it,” enthuses Sonia Perez, a public practitioner who works from home in Belmont, N.C. “Working from home gives you the maximum freedom and flexibility to choose the schedule and remain balanced.” However, you must remember that the buck stops with you.
Jeanice Neel, who works at home in Hope, Ark., says, “It is the best thing I have ever done, I only wish that I had done it sooner.”
Among the many sole proprietors who left leased office space for rent-free home offices is Mike Wade of Vancouver, Wash. He says, “Do it. Why pay the exorbitant costs of commercial office space, poor parking, poor heating and air conditioning, noisy buildings, poor security and the needless pollution from commuting?”
Why pay those costs? Because working at home is not for the faint of heart. Even those succeeding at it warn that working from home takes higher levels of self-motivation, self-marketing and other disciplines that practitioners don’t need to draw on nearly as much when working in a mainstream setting.
“You need to be a self-starter and be able to shut out the household when you work,” says June Howard, who runs a full-time public practice at her home in Shoreline, Wash. Not too far away in Seattle, full-time, at-home public practitioner Kim Worrell adds, “Have a good home office set-up, structure your time and separate work from home life.”
The same rules apply to moonlighters. “You can’t be distracted by letting personal items take up your business day,” says a mid-level public practitioner who works at a firm by day and moonlights at home as a tax preparer during busy season.
"Know that you must separate work from home. A dedicated room that you leave at the end of the workday is key,” adds a public firm partner who also moonlights during busy season.
Reed Tinsley, a Houston, Texas, CPA and prominent healthcare industry consultant, warns home-based sole practitioners about “‘Opportunity cost’ — that is, when you are not working, you are not earning any money.”
Costs of all kinds are especially critical at startup because building a business from the more remote confines of home can take longer than building one along Main Street. “Make sure that you have six months of personal expenses in the bank to cover you during startup,” warns Rebel L. Robertson, who operates a public practice full time from her home in Dallas, Texas And it keeps her close to her beloved chocolate Labrador. Priceless!
NOW IT’S YOUR TURN: How do CPAs work at home and still succeed? Join the survey; get the answers.
COMMENTS: Questions, rants or raves? Write Rick Telberg.
Copyright © 2007 Bay Street Group LLC. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.
2 Responses to “More CPAs Work at Home. You Can Too!”
DeAnn Reaves, C.P.A.
Is there a (trustworthy) way to find accounting work at home? There are so many scams on the internet! I am a C.P.A. and I am interested in doing general accounting work from home.
Mary MacDonald
I just spoke with three other CPAs yesterday at a CPE class who are working at home, and we discussed having clients come to their home. One said she did everything by e-mail, fax, or shipping methods, another said she has room in her home and has only well-known long-standing clients come to her home, and another said she uses her dining room for a conference room. I, on the other hand, do not want clients in my home.
I propose to schedule necessary days, maybe one or two a week at most, to meet with clients outside my home. I would like to use the conference room that I now have access to in my office building, but if this will not be possible, we could always meet at the client’s office or somewhere else that the client prefers. It could be a problem, but I will work it out, and even if it takes more time to drive around, and gasoline costs are through the roof, it still is less expensive than paying for office rent, and higher phone and internet costs working in an office building.