This article is a list of profitable niches for bookkeepers and virtual CFO service businesses.

1. HVAC companies
2. Pest & mosquito control companies
3. Funeral homes
4. Crematoriums
5. Septic tank installation & servicing companies
6. Asphalt paving companies
7. Dentists’ offices
8. Doctors’ offices
9. Independent insurance agencies (life insurance, property insurance, auto insurance)
10. Marketing agencies
11. Website development agencies
12. Marinas
13. Yacht brokerages
14. Yacht & ship management companies
15. IT managed service providers (MSPs)
16. Junk removal companies
17. Heavy equipment rental companies
18. Youtubers with over 20,000 subscribers
19. Farms
20. Dog groomers
21. Dog hotels
22. Doggy daycares
23. Residential property managers
24. Real estate GPs & syndicators
25. Real estate developers
26. Residential cleaning companies
27. Commercial janitorial companies
28. Tour operator companies
29. Window cleaning companies
30. Small lumber stores
31. Convenience stores
32. Gas stations
33. Concrete contractors
34. Independent consultants
35. Optometrists
36. Bars
37. Restaurants (the larger the better)
38. E-commerce
39. Law firms
40. General contractors
41. Roofing contractors
42. Plumbers
43. Electricians
44. Veterinarians
45. Gyms
46. Rock climbing gyms
47. Nonprofits
48. Tent & party equipment rental companies
49. Security service companies
50. Investment advisors
51. SaaS (software) companies
52. Business brokerages
53. Trust management companies
54. Securities broker-dealers
55. Foundries
56. Metal working shops

If you want to attract higher value clients, you’ll want to go after a niche where businesses are commonly missing out on important opportunities (or are commonly incurring significant extra costs) due to bad bookkeeping. You can then provide the solution. Look for businesses that are operationally complex and/or have high gross margins (ideally both). Here are some examples:

1. Doctors’ offices (Healthcare)

Medical billing and reimbursement is complex. Billing and bookkeeping are complex interconnected requirements for doctors. Insurance claims, insurance reimbursements, different rates for insurance and cash patients, and healthcare billing regulations and debt collection all come into play.

Additionally, doctors earn a lot per hour so it’s not worth it for them to spend their time doing the books.

2. General contractors (Construction)

General contractors require subcontractor management, contract management, cash flow management (since construction projects often have long, staged payment cycles with financing from multiple sources and some payments depending on performance), and project cost estimating.

3. Foundation, structure, and building exterior contractors (Construction)

These types of contractors typically have over 2 month lags between when they bill for services and when they actually receive the money they are owed (the average age of accounts receivables for these companies is 67.5 days). That means cash flow, revenue recognition, and appropriate AR management are all more important here than for an “average” business.

4. Nonprofits

Nonprofits have a lot to lose (their tax exempt status) if they don’t keep good books. They also must track restricted funds, donations, and grants, and sometimes must produce financial statements for donors and regulators. They have to carefully avoid or track unrelated business income (UBI), and pay unrelated business income tax on any UBI they generate.

5. Car rental companies

A company that is renting at least 10 cars has a lot of depreciation as well as ongoing repair and maintenance costs. They also have operational and marketing costs. And they have a lot of cash flow. That is a good recipe to be a profitable bookkeeping client.

6. Heavy equipment rental companies

Like car rental companies, heavy equipment (e.g. cranes, bulldozers, etc) rental companies are operationally complex with a lot of ongoing depreciation, repairs, and maintenance.

What are the different types of bookkeeping?

Bookkeeping and accounting mean different things to different businesses. In general, there are several types of accounting tasks that may or may not be included in your bookkeeping services:

• Categorizing transactions (from bank accounts and credit card accounts) using the labels from a chart of accounts. This is traditionally what “bookkeeping” meant.
• Handling accounts receivable.
  • Zippia lists the median salary for AR clerks at $36,425/year ($17.52/hour). Zippia estimates the “typical range” at $29-45k / year.
  • Salary.com lists the average AR position (not just clerk) salary at $76,347/year.
  • Indeed lists the average base pay for AR clerks at $20.55 / hour.
• Handling accounts payable.
  • Zippia lists the median salary for AP clerks at $38,333/year ($18.43/hour). Zippia estimates the “typical range” at $30-48k / year.
  • Salary.com lists the average AP position (not just clerk) salary at $77,726/year.
  • Indeed lists the average base pay for AP clerks at $20.37 / hour.
• Managing payroll.
• Paying & filing sales taxes.
• Filing local, state, and federal income taxes.
• Providing monthly or quarterly reports (P&L statement, cash flow statement, balance sheet, and possibly industry or business-specific KPI tracking)

Accounts Receivable

An accounts receivable (AR) clerk or specialist is responsible for making sure that customers pay their bills to the company, and that those transactions are recorded. Tasks included in these jobs are:

• Generating invoices and sending them to clients/customers.
• Following up with any clients/customers with unpaid invoices.
• Maintaining and updating accounts receivable records to ensure aging (how long each client’s payment has been due), credits, and collections are applied and uncollectible amounts are accounted for.
• Reconciling bank (and cash) accounts with AR accounts.
• Preparing financial reports with AR KPIs so that the company’s management can gain insight into how collection efforts are going.
• (For contractors): Preparing, issuing, and removing liens against the properties of customers who refuse to pay.
• Hiring collection agencies or selling uncollected AR accounts when they go unpaid for a long time.

Accounts Payable

An accounts payable (AP) clerk or specialist is responsible for making sure that all valid bills are paid and that no invalid (or inaccurate) bills are paid. The various tasks often included under the umbrella of AP work include:

• Verifying that invoices from vendors and suppliers are legitimate and accurate.
  • Is the invoice missing the invoice number? If so, you may need to ask the vendor/supplier to add the number.
  • If your business uses purchase orders, then you’ll want to match an invoice to a purchase order to verify that it’s legitimate and accurate (i.e. for the same dollar amount) before paying it.
  • Your business may have some other approval process that you need to go through before paying an invoice.
• Communicating with vendors and suppliers to correct any inaccurate invoices.
• Saving invoices (or a scanned copy of invoices in the case of paper invoices delivered by conventional mail) to an accounting system or computer storage system.
• Coding invoices into your business’s accounting system (i.e. select the general ledger account, department, entity, location, etc).
• Making payments on verified or approved invoices. This may be by sending a wire from your business’s bank website OR it may be via Bill.com or Tipalti or Coupa or from within your business’s ERP system such as NetSuite.
• Near each month end, you’ll need to reconcile accounts
  • Cash account reconciliation: ending balance in books and records = ending balance from bank statement. This ensures that all cash disbursements during the month have been accounted for in the books and records.
  • Reconcile AP balance on the balance sheet to the AP balance on the Aging Schedule (a table of all a company’s accounts payables, ordered by their due dates)

An accounts payable clerk may be able to process anywhere from 30-120 invoices per day (excluding end of month days spent on reconciliation) depending on the skill of the clerk, the complexity and uniformity of the invoices, the percentage of invoices with errors, the business’s approval process for paying invoices, and the amount of automation that the company uses in the AP process. 32-45 per day is most typical. 120 invoices per day is absurdly high and is only possible for a company with highly uniform invoices that all come in through a standardized & heavily automated software system.

As a rule of thumb, if you run an outsourced AP service, you should charge at least enough for you to hire 1 full-time employee (whether that is a domestic or overseas employee) for each 500 invoices to be processed each month.

How much should I charge for bookkeeping services?

A quick search around various job boards shows that part-time bookkeepers in South Florida are being hired for $20-40 per hour. Full-time bookkeeper jobs often include more tasks such as payroll, accounts receivable, accounts payable, and sometimes additional tasks as well. These jobs typically carry salaries in the range of $40-50k per year (but can be up to $100k for some specialist roles at some companies).

Below is a table which shows the rates of various outsourced bookkeeping services.

Company	Description	Price
BackOffice.co	– Free Quickbooks or Xero software included – Quickbooks Certified ProAdvisor Elite team (with overseas support most likely) – Monthly or weekly bookkeeping – Cash and accrual accounting – Login access for your CPA – Categorize all transactions (import bank statements; reconcile bank & credit card) – Monthly income / P&L statement – Monthly balance sheet * Easily manage your bill pay and payroll (how?)	Starts at $89/mo
Pilot.com	– Designed for startups – accrual basis accounting – Monthly P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow statements – Monthly burn rate calculations – Dedicated finance expert to talk to when needed	Starting at $499/mo (billed annually) for pre-revenue companies with up to $15k in monthly expenses
Bench.co	Essential: – Monthly books – Monthly P&L and balance sheet – 1099 reporting – Year end financial report for your tax team – 30% discount on Gusto payroll – 30% discount on Stripe payments Premium: – Everything in Essential plan – Annual state and federal income tax filings – Unlimited 1-1 income tax advisory services *Add $100/mo if you want segment-level bookkeeping	Essential: $299/mo (or $249/mo billed annually) Premium: $499/mo (or $399/mo billed annually)
RemoteBooksOnline.com	– Monthly bookkeeping – Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisors and Xero-Certified Advisors – Accounting software included – Assigned a dedicated bookkeeper (probably overseas) and meet monthly with a lead accountant with a 4-year accounting degree	Starts at $95/mo (for one checking account)
Rent-A-Bookkeeper	– Basic monthly bookkeeping – Monthly P&L and balance sheet	Most clients spend $250-500/mo
Fixe	Restaurant bookkeeping Core Service: – Weekly vendor payments (accounts payable) – Sales tax filings – Bookkeeping & reconciliations for up to 2 bank accounts, 2 credit cards, and one cloud-based POS system – Payroll system integration – Monthly P&L statement and balance sheet – Monthly inventory adjustment – 1 hour phone support each month – Unlimited email support Pro Service: – Everything in Core, plus – Weekly “Flash Reports” (what are those?) – Customized period reporting – 2 hour phone support – Payroll processing (but you still pay for the payroll system’s fees) – A/R (up to 20 invoices/mo) Premium: – Everything in pro, plus: – 4 hours phone support each month – Up to 3 connected bank accounts and 3 connected credit card accounts – A/R (up to 50 invoices/mo) – Weekly inventory adjustment – Customized reporting	Core: $550/mo/location Pro: $750/mo/location Premium: $1,000+/mo/location