How to Create the Perfect Space for a Home-Based Accounting Business
Starting a home-based accounting business offers many benefits. You have more flexibility and can save money because you don’t have to worry about renting a pricey office space. You also won’t have to worry about commuting, can scale up or down quickly, and could potentially enjoy flexible working hours you set yourself. Finally, you will be able to deduct home costs from your income taxes. This last point applies whether you are buying or building a new home — or simply renovating your current one to accommodate your new work life. Learn more about which of these options is best for you below.
Buying a new house to set up a home office
If you are ready to start fresh anyway, you might consider buying a brand-new home to accommodate your accounting business. When shopping around for a property, ensure it has the extra room you need to run your operation. If you are simply in need of a desk, a single extra room should do. Even if you need one office, consider the size of furniture like desks, chairs, and even shelves that will hold a printer, fax machine, and other tech items.
When shopping for a home, don’t just haphazardly browse online. There is a logical checklist you should follow when buying. First, figure out your budget based on your savings and income. You will likely need to make a down payment of as much as 20 percent of the total sale price. If you need to take out a loan, get pre-approved. Then you can have a local real estate agent guide you through the search process, and you also start looking online.
Building a new house
Another option is to build your own dream home from the ground up. This requires more time, money, and energy, but it allows you to have total control over the end product. There are also other advantages of building your own house, as it allows you to start totally fresh, incorporate energy-efficient extras like solar panels. With careful design and planning, you can subsequently save on expenses that can impact your business’s operating costs, such as energy use and heating and cooling.
Just as with buying a house, when you are building a home, there is a logical series of steps you should follow to ease the process and avoid added stress. First, you need to make sure the land you are building on has the proper zoning permits from the relevant municipality. A surveyor must stake out the lot, and you need a contractor to coordinate professionals from electricians to plumbers. The contractor will usually liaise directly with the architect, who will draw up the actual plans for the building. You can coordinate design details (e.g., if you want your office to have a huge bay window) with the architect.
Renovating your current home
Finally, if you want to stay in your current home, you can simply renovate that space to accommodate your new home-based business. In general, remodeling will likely be the cheapest of these options. This is assuming you don’t run into any unforeseen costs, like unexpected electrical wiring issues or health hazards like mold. The cost of renovating will also depend in part on just how much you need to change. If you already have an extra room and simply need to transform it into a more accessible office space (e.g., by getting rid of built-in shelving to make it larger), this will cost less than say, adding an entire extra attachment onto the house.
Whichever of the above options you choose, you are sure to benefit from a home-based accounting business. More and more Americans are seeing the advantages of this working style, with opportunities in the market both plentiful and lucrative. Just follow the guidelines above to lay the groundwork for your home office space, and you’ll be ready to succeed.
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