Self Assessment Season: Could Bookkeeping Be Your Next Career?

Every October, millions of people across the UK sit down to the same job: filing a Self Assessment tax return before the 31 October paper deadline, or the 31 January deadline if filing online. More than 12 million returns go out each tax year, according to HMRC, and 11.48 million were filed by the January deadline last time round, 475,772 of them on the final day alone. It is fiddly, it takes an evening you would rather spend elsewhere, and most people do it once a year, under protest. Some people do it for a living, for dozens of clients at once, and quite happily. That person could be you.

Worth knowing why it matters to get right. For a client who misses the deadline, the cost is not trivial: a flat £100 penalty from HMRC, even if no tax is owed, rising to £10 a day after three months, capped at £900, then a further 5% of the tax due or £300, whichever is greater, at six and twelve months. Knowing this, and acting on it on someone else’s behalf before it becomes a problem, is itself a service people are glad to pay for.

A self-employed bookkeeper keeps a client’s financial records accurate throughout the year: income, expenses, invoices, and bank reconciliation. By the time Self Assessment season arrives, most of the work is already done. Many bookkeepers prepare and submit the return itself, working from home on their own schedule.

Not glamorous, but it is the part that actually earns the money. And it is not limited to tax returns either. According to the ICB Bookkeepers Survey 2024, around two in three self-employed bookkeepers also handle payroll for clients, turning one skill set into a steadier source of work spread across the year, rather than one busy October.

Let’s start with the number that matters most. The same ICB survey found that 60% of self-employed bookkeepers earn between £20,000 and £40,000 a year, and a further 20% earn more than that. Seven in ten run their own practice rather than working for someone else. If you are weighing bookkeeping against a related route into finance, our guide to what payroll pays in the UK shows what payroll administrators and managers earn by comparison.

Less than you might expect. Training as a bookkeeper does not require a degree. Among ICB-qualified bookkeepers who also run payroll for their clients, 76% never completed one. The usual starting point is the ICB Level 2 Certificate in Bookkeeping, around 80 to 100 learning hours, studied at your own pace, with three exams along the way. From there, most progress on to ICB Level 3 before working towards full membership and the right to practise independently.

Fair question, and more realistic than it might feel halfway through filling in your own tax return. The ICB Level 2 Certificate assumes no previous bookkeeping experience. It is built as the entry point, not something you need existing finance knowledge to attempt. Most people study it part time, alongside a job, over anything up to twelve months, and many start by taking on a client or two before deciding whether to go further. More than half of self-employed bookkeepers, 54%, still work part time once qualified, averaging around 20 hours a week, according to the ICB survey. Nobody expects a full client book overnight, and most people reading this would only need one or two to know whether it suits them.

So when you sit down with your own return this month, it might be worth asking a slightly different question. Not just how to get it done, but whether you could be the person other people hand theirs to. The skills are learnable, the work fits around the rest of your life, and the first step is smaller than it looks. If you would like to see where it starts, explore our ICB bookkeeping courses and find the route that suits you.