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Peter_G_Stone
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Hello @rooftop, congratulations on dipping your toes into the waters of self employment! You have a lot of of great questions. I'll answer a few based off my own experiences thus far. Taxes and bookkeeping go hand-in-hand, so you are on point with that thought process. When you provide the bookkeeping for a small biz client, preparing their taxes is a breeze (relatively speaking).  It is valuable to BOTH PARTIES and as such makes a great selling point for you. The end game should be to have employees to handle bookkeeping duties (which I'm sure you know) and for you to utilize your qualifications in more meaningful and lucrative ways. I view bookkeeping as a necessity, a great way to get your foot in the door with clients, and an excellent way to keep the ship full steam ahead with the recurring revenue it provides. It is a powerful portal to more valuable tax, planning, and consulting services. 

As far as software is concerned, pick one and run with it. I'm responding to you on a Quickbooks forum, so you know which one I prefer. That is nothing against Xero, Sage, etc., but I have the most experience and demand with QBDT & QBO. I don't have time to learn various accounting software packages and quite honestly I could spend more time mastering the QB products. You should not cater to clients when it comes to accounting software. Your value comes from your experience and knowledge. BE GREAT WITH ONE THING & not a jack of all trades.

Furthermore, if you are using a cloud-based application (QBO) they all utilize 3rd party apps and that alone will take up time figuring how to efficiently use those. However, like you saw and read, it depends on your clientele. A lot of my clients (sole proprietor contractors) don't take my recommendations to utilize some of the efficiencies 3rd party apps provide because they don't want to pay the subscription costs. So there is a lot of cost-benefit considerations that you need to figure out for yourself through further research and asking questions on forums like these.

For tax software, I use Lacerte. It is powerful enough to handle all my different types of clients, from very simple US 1040's to very complex consolidated Corp returns. So again, it depends on your clientele. See what the packages offer and what you need. What you don't want is to have to continually learn new tax software. Obviously, it is highly ineffective  come tax season to be playing around with your tax software because it can't handle what you need it to...learned that the hard way!! Think about your clients today but also the ones you want in the FUTURE. They may look different and you should have the technological ability to handle whatever business comes through the door. The knowledge is already in your head, but transferring it to the software can be a PITA, so I suggest purchasing a quality tax software package and get to know it inside and out. As I said, I use Lacerte. I have also heard positive remarks about Drake and Prosystem fx. 

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