Hi Lawason,

take your points one at a time,

1) Yes if you want to have a practicing certificate from the IAB without which you will not be covered for MLR unless you do it through HMRC which will cost £170. (£120 for approval of the premises and £50 for approval of yourself).

2) Depends on what your client uses. Whilst some clients will outsource their work to you so the choice of software that you use is very much down to your personal preferences, others may want for you to work on their systems. Sage is more widely used but a lot of people swear by QB. There are other offerings as well.

3) There are a lot of threads on here discussing that very issue. I think that there's no right or wrong answer. From what I read it's a very good product especially if your just starting out. Is it £300 worth of good? I don't know.
Don't expect having a website to bring in customers though. You need to get them to the website by other means.

4) Start with friends, family, work associates etc. Network through breakfast clubs and other local business clubs. Just generally get out there and get known. As mentioned above, websites in themselves don't work and need other methods to get people to look at the website.

Hope that this helps,

Shaun.