After the company he was working for became a victim of the global economic downturn in 2011, Jonathan Kemp of Portsmouth was looking at his options. Deciding that getting back on the daily train to London and keeping up with the rat race was more than he could face, so he decided to go into business for himself, and took up bookkeeping.

With a background in IT and ERP systems, Jonathan was comfortable with the credits and debits that make up the basics of bookkeeping, and wanted to know more. He turned to Ideal Schools, and was immediately impressed with the level of knowledge on display.

Jonathan said: “Unlike a lot of the other places I looked at, Ideal Schools has a clear, concise and detailed plan for how a student gets their career up and running. I phoned up, and was straight through to Ideal Schools’ Brian McVean. No call centres, no waiting, just right through to the people I’d be learning from. That impressed me.

“More than that, it was the fact that everyone I spoke to had the knowledge at their fingertips. None of that ‘I’ll have to get back to you on that’ – they knew their stuff without hesitation.”

Having scored Distinctions on all the levels of the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers exams he sat, Jonathan dived straight into the world of bookkeeping at the deep end, setting up his limited company, Balancing the Books Ltd, and working from home.

He said: “I had the confidence to go straight in as a limited company, thanks to what I had learned, and the way Ideal Schools developed my skills. I didn’t like the idea of advising small and micro entities on whether to go for limited company status, if I was only a sole trader myself.

“I like to think I’ve earned a lot of trust from my clients by being upfront about what can and cannot be achieved for their businesses. One example was when a client was worrying about auto-enrolment. He’d been to his accountant, and been told that it was going to cost his business a lot of money.

“As a single employee business, I didn’t need to enrol, but I did the research, and enrolled my business, then went back to him and walked him through the necessary steps to do it himself. He’s a client for life now.”

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