SidelineLegitimate side income, reviewed weekly

SidelineWork for yourself

Bookkeeping

Keep the books for a sole trader

Reconcile a month of transactions for a plumber, a tutor, or a market stall — someone whose books are a shoebox. You need to be accurate. You do not need to be their accountant.

A notebook, a pen, and an envelope of cash on a table

Checked 22 September 2026. Figures are ranges, not offers.

Where
In your own town — London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Cardiff, Dublin, Toronto, Vancouver, Sydney, Melbourne, New York, Chicago, and smaller places. You do not need a platform. The files can be remote once you trust each other.
Hours
A small trader is often two to four hours a month. It clumps near tax deadlines. Do not take ten clients in March of your first year.
Pay
Monthly packages for a tiny business often land around $80–250 or £70–200
To start
Spreadsheet skills are enough at the start. You can work in the software the client already pays for. Do not buy a franchise or a “bookkeeping business in a box”.

Why it is listed

Small businesses already pay for this and often cannot find a person. The boundary — you organise, an accountant advises — is clear enough to write down.

What you can realistically expect

Your first client will have a mess. Price the clean-up separately from the monthly tidy. If you are not sure about tax treatment, you say so and they ask an accountant. That sentence keeps you safe.

Who pays you

The client pays a monthly invoice. Get view-only access to bank feeds where the software allows it. Never be a signatory on their account. Never move their money.

How to start

  1. List what you will do: categorise, reconcile, send a monthly summary. List what you will not do: tax advice, payroll, loans.
  2. Offer one month as a paid clean-up, not a free audit.
  3. Ask a self-employed person you know whose receipts live in a bag.
  4. Use a shared folder. Do not take their only copies home with no backup.

Finding the first customers

  • A sole trader in your family or street who already asks you “which app is this”.
  • A local accountant who does not want the shoebox work. Some will refer it.
  • A market or studio neighbour with a year’s worth of unopened envelopes.

What to charge

Quote the clean-up as a fixed number of hours, then a monthly fee. If they have three bank accounts and a cash tin, it is not the same job as one current account.

Tax and paperwork

Keep a note of every payment and every cost from the first job. In the UK this is usually self-employment; tell HMRC when your income reaches the point they set. In the US it is often self-employment tax, sometimes with quarterly estimates. Other countries have their own registration. This is not tax advice — an hour with an accountant beats any course. Professional indemnity insurance is worth it once you have more than a couple of clients. You are near their money even if you never touch it.

Read this before you start

  • If anyone asks you to receive their customers’ payments into your personal account, that is not bookkeeping.
  • Courses that promise “bookkeeping clients delivered” are lead schemes.
  • Do not invent a qualification. “I reconcile monthly books” is enough and it is true.

Sideline will not ask you for money. Anyone who messages you claiming we will is not us. Write to [email protected] if something on this page looks wrong.

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