AIMS Accountants for Business
AIMS Accountants for Business
Prospective franchisees often worry that the process of becoming a franchisee will be long and difficult. Thankfully, with AIMS, this couldn’t be further from the truth. We know that the last thing that you want when you’re taking the plunge to become self employed is a long-drawn-out process with lots of frustrating hoops to jump through. Sure, you have obligations and paperwork to fill out, but the steps to becoming an AIMS Accountant are surprisingly simple. That said, we encourage prospective joiners to move at their own pace. If you want to take a bit longer, that’s your call – it’s the same way that we don’t impose financial targets on our franchisees. These key decisions need to be driven by you, not us.
The steps below relate to accountants who don’t currently own their own practice. If you already run an accountancy practice but you want to convert it to an AIMS Accountants franchise, give us a call on 020 7616 6622.
You may have already been contacted by AIMS Accountants, asking you to attend one of our free discovery webinars. If you have already been contacted, it’s because you possess the necessary qualifications to succeed as an AIMS Accountant. If you haven’t yet been contacted but you are a fully qualified accountant, we definitely want to speak to you too!
These webinars are a relaxed forum, enabling you to speak to our senior management team about what it means to be an AIMS Accountant. We will talk about roles and responsibilities and expected earnings, among other things. You will also have the opportunity to hear from an existing AIMS franchisee, as well as ask questions and listen to questions asked by other people who are thinking of changing roles and becoming self employed.
Once you’ve attended a webinar, you move to the research stage. This stage is where you will have the chance to speak to 2 existing AIMS Accountants. The reason that this stage is important for you is so that you can find out from people who have sat where you are sitting, how you are likely to perform and what the overall experience is really like. It’s always better from the horse’s mouth as it were!
You can set your criteria for the AIMS central team and they will find people who meet these criteria. For example, if you’re a new parent and you’re looking at joining AIMS because of the flexibility that will allow you to spend more time with small children, we will set you up with someone else similar. It might be that you qualified with CIMA and you’ve spent the last 30 years in industry so you want to speak to someone who has the same experience but has made a real success of their AIMS practice.
This stage is very important because it’ll help you determine whether AIMS is really a good fit for you.
The next stage is for you to come and see us. We don’t bite, we promise! If you’ve made it to this stage, everything is looking great and we just want to meet face to face at our office in London to firm up the details. This is a great opportunity for you to ask us lots of direct questions. It’s also just a fantastic opportunity for us all to decide whether we want to work with each other for the long run!
We don’t want to dwell on the financials, so we won’t! The important thing to remember is that we’re able to keep our franchise fee low because we don’t require you to have a high street presence like other accountancy franchises do.
We use half of your franchise fee to set up some initial marketing campaigns for you so that you get off to a flying start with your practice. This will include things like telesales, Google Ads, website building and leaflet design. The other half of your franchise fee is used for your initial training. This training will be an in-depth look at tax, as well as being focused on running your business, sales and marketing, and conducting client meetings.
As soon as you’ve paid in full, we will arrange your training for a convenient time. You’ll have one week online and one week face to face and four more weeks ongoing as you start meeting clients.
You’re now ready to run free! You’ve completed your training and you’re ready to start having client meetings. The first Monday after your training is complete, this is what will happen. During the training period, the likelihood is that you’ll have generated a couple of initial client meetings. It is now your job to put into practice everything that you’ve learned not just in the last 2 weeks, but throughout your career.
You are now a bone fide business owner with the support of the largest network of qualified accountants in the UK. This is where the fun begins!
To start your 6 steps today, please call James on 020 7616 6622. You can also find out more about becoming an AIMS Accountants by visiting our website here!