Upwork.com - hourly rate for "entry-level" accountant?

[jeromedawg]

Hey all,

One of my friends clued me in to Upwork.com and, for those of you who do any work through it, was curious about your experience with it. I was particularly interested to know what would be a 'recommended' hourly rate for my wife who has an accounting background and claims she is only "entry-level" (I'm not even sure how to determine this relative to Upwork's definition). She stopped working at her last accounting job back in 2016 not long after our first child was born, so has been out of the corporate world since. Before that she was doing mostly accounts payable but with some accounts receivable and general accounting in addition for around 7-8 years. Currently she helps with various administrative tasks at her parents' restaurant (mostly revolving around 'auditing' bank accounts/statements and helping manage the online ordering services her parents wanted to sign up for - Grubhub, Eat24, DoorDash, etc).

In any case, we started building a profile for her but I'm not sure what a 'fair' hourly rate should be given her experience. Also, is 8 years as an accountant still considered "entry-level" in a case like this? Or should she just consider herself "entry-level" because she's never done anything like this with online freelancing, etc before?

[katsiki]

What was her salary range, or hourly rate in her last job? 

This could vary widely but I would think she would get $15-20/hr in the real world (possibly more depending on state).  Not sure about upwork's pricing...

8 years does not sound entry-level to me either.

Hopefully, some accounting professionals will chime in.  I am not one.  I am considering this from a manager or business owner perspective.

[jeromedawg]

What was her salary range, or hourly rate in her last job? 

This could vary widely but I would think she would get $15-20/hr in the real world (possibly more depending on state).  Not sure about upwork's pricing...

8 years does not sound entry-level to me either.

Hopefully, some accounting professionals will chime in.  I am not one.  I am considering this from a manager or business owner perspective.

We're in Southern CA and she was getting around $52k so I think roughly $25~/hr?

[Calvawt]

Accounts payable is usually a clerk level position, so while its technically in the accounting field I wouldn't consider it experience as an "accountant" in most cases.  An accountant is generally defined as a degreed level position.  In smaller companies, those lines can get blurry though.  However even with that opinion if someone did AP, AR, and some general accounting for close to 8 years, I would not consider them entry level anymore. 

You won't get work on most of those websites with a high rate until you have lots of jobs under your belt worked on that site, so figure out what others are trying to get to start and price around that.