Rate for freelance work?

henrietta

Hi
I'm a recently qualified accountant whose experience is with a small firm. Since finishing my contract I have been unemployed and unsuccessfully looking for work in industry.
In the meantime I have recently been offered a few days freelance work with another practice and have agreed to it just to keep up my experience and keep me occupied. There is also the potential for more in the future and although its not the direction I want to go the money will come in handy. I have agreed a rate with them which when I took the time to think about it I feel is way to low but as its only for a few days and I'm not doing anything else I'll let it go. I hate any kind of barganing or confrontation.
But anyway what I was wondering is what ye would think would be a reasonable hourly/daily rate for me to ask for should a similar opportunity present itself in the future. I am based in the midlands so may be less than Dublin rates.

Thanks in advance for any opinions. I'm at a total loss. Hate underselling myself or being taken advantage of but don't want to quote some ridiculous figure and be laughed at either.

Thank you.

buzzing

henrietta wrote: »

Hi
I'm a recently qualified accountant whose experience is with a small firm. Since finishing my contract I have been unemployed and unsuccessfully looking for work in industry.
In the meantime I have recently been offered a few days freelance work with another practice and have agreed to it just to keep up my experience and keep me occupied. There is also the potential for more in the future and although its not the direction I want to go the money will come in handy. I have agreed a rate with them which when I took the time to think about it I feel is way to low but as its only for a few days and I'm not doing anything else I'll let it go. I hate any kind of barganing or confrontation.
But anyway what I was wondering is what ye would think would be a reasonable hourly/daily rate for me to ask for should a similar opportunity present itself in the future. I am based in the midlands so may be less than Dublin rates.

Thanks in advance for any opinions. I'm at a total loss. Hate underselling myself or being taken advantage of but don't want to quote some ridiculous figure and be laughed at either.

Thank you.

Have a mate who i know qualified last year, he was in a small place as well, kinda similar situation. He doing a good bit of so called consulting work. As far as i am aware he getting in and around 750 a week to do management accounts, audit work etc.
As the charge out rate of the juniors in the firm would be in excess of that.

hopefully your not selling yourself too short, by the way u mentioned that " its not the direction u wanna go" are u thinking of travelling....

henrietta

Hi, thanks for the reply. That is well, well above what I was offered or expected but sure what can you do.

When I say that its not the direction I want to go I mean I don't want to work in practice. My experience to date has been so frustrating constantly battling against incomplete records, clueless people trying to do there own books and then you expected to fix it and even worse totally incompetent bookkeepers. I see the way my bosses have to deal with some of the clients and think God no not for me. And its all small fry at the end of the day, a few hundred here or there and there is a huge fuss. I mean I know a few hundred is a lot of money but if the client can't be bothered to keep any records or half of their correspondence then what can you do?
Sorry gone off on a bit of a rant there! Travel isn't an option for me due to committments here. I think I would like to try industry for a while. Maybe work as part of a team in a bigger company or even just be responsible for the accounts of a small company or group of companies. I'm not overly ambitious and don't ever want to be FD or anything just earn a decent wage and go home without stressing over what will come tomorrow or if anything will ever be done on time.
Maybe I'm fooling myself and such a job doesn't exist. Who knows, maybe the grass is always greener and I will come running back to practice!

Anyway thanks for you reply.

DoMyBooks

I worked in industry for a while. If you work for a decent company and get a good system going it can be satisfying.

censuspro

henrietta wrote: »

Hi, thanks for the reply. That is well, well above what I was offered or expected but sure what can you do.

When I say that its not the direction I want to go I mean I don't want to work in practice. My experience to date has been so frustrating constantly battling against incomplete records, clueless people trying to do there own books and then you expected to fix it and even worse totally incompetent bookkeepers. I see the way my bosses have to deal with some of the clients and think God no not for me. And its all small fry at the end of the day, a few hundred here or there and there is a huge fuss. I mean I know a few hundred is a lot of money but if the client can't be bothered to keep any records or half of their correspondence then what can you do?
Sorry gone off on a bit of a rant there! Travel isn't an option for me due to committments here. I think I would like to try industry for a while. Maybe work as part of a team in a bigger company or even just be responsible for the accounts of a small company or group of companies. I'm not overly ambitious and don't ever want to be FD or anything just earn a decent wage and go home without stressing over what will come tomorrow or if anything will ever be done on time.
Maybe I'm fooling myself and such a job doesn't exist. Who knows, maybe the grass is always greener and I will come running back to practice!

Anyway thanks for you reply.

Alot of newly qualified accountants have unrealistic expectations about what they are going to earn when they qualify. They was a common misconception during the past 10 years that once you qualified a salary of €80K was just a formality.

henrietta

Thanks for helpful replies.
And just to clarify I don't expect to get €80K, even in the best of times I thought 35-40 straight our of training would be good. I trained in a small practice outside of Dublin which is worlds away from life in the Big 4. When you annualise what I've been offered it comes in just under €20K! Sorry if some think I'm being unreasonable but after all the time and effort and sacrifice that went into training I really had thought it would count for a bit more than that

Alan Shore

Well,
At the moment I think €150-€180 per day would be acceptable.

drumlishboy

Would you not think about going out on you own while doing the freelance gig. I by no means am one with a vast amount of exp but if you could work more closely with you own clients you could at least sit down and talk to them (as opposed though a partner) as to how to prepare books etc.