You’re a contractor determined to achieve a good work-life balance, but you’re not sure how. There are some fundamental elements to help towards achieving what many contractors are enjoying; the route to a good work-life balance for a contactor includes:

An expert accountant, preferably part of a firm of accountants, offering a host of accountancy and business services, and providing an online bookkeeping and accounting facility. That might seem like a lot to ask, but these days it’s the very least your business should demand!

I understand the finding an expert accountant without a referral from a colleague, friend or family member can feel like a daunting task, but like most things there’s a way to go about it.

Cloud bookkeeping and accounting accelerates businesses to the next step of growth and brings business owners closer to achieving a work-life balance. Cloud technology plus an expert accountant gives business owners the sense of control they desire: businesses can stay in touch with their accountant and access their books and accounts in real time at any time (with HMRC, bank feed and a receipts app.); cloud technology this sophisticated just wasn’t imaginable even ten years ago.

Discipline is another important factor when you’re a contractor, but there are different elements to this regime around discipline so that businesses achieve success and their owners attain the work-life balance they desire.
These discipline elements include:

• Not working after a particular hour in the day;
• Starting work by or before a particular hour in the day (depending on the sector);
• Having at least one day off in the week and remembering that it’s not the many hundreds of hours put in, but the quality of the work put in over the hours.
• Doing regular admin, including bookkeeping, invoicing, software maintenance etc., will mean you know how much money is available in the business.
• And essential: realising that not all the money in the business is yours and knowing how important it is to draw a line between your own money and that of the business.

Minimising travel is another important element to achieving a work-life balance for contractors, because commuting can cut into the day and eat into your sense of well-being. Sometimes travel is unavoidable, but taking on contracts that are within a certain radius over those that aren’t, or renting somewhere near the contract job are ways to mitigate the stress and wasted time spent commuting.

Work-life balance
An expert accountant offering contractor accounting services, taking some time out to enjoy yourself, showing discipline and determination and doing one’s utmost to minimise the time spent commuting, all of these contribute to achieving a good work-life balance as a contractor.