How Much Does Bookkeeping Cost?

How you pay your bookkeeper depends on whether they are in-house (full-time or part-time employees), freelance, or an online bookkeeping service. If they do agree to provide retroactive records, you could end up with a pretty hefty bill. The cost of full-service accounting is hefty, and CPAs tend to charge a higher hourly rate than bookkeepers.

• Every receipt is important, and keeping track of your company’s finances properly may become laborious.
• However, businesses need services that can also handle payroll and taxes.
• Hiring a part-time bookkeeper when first establishing a business is a smart investment.
• A virtual bookkeeper is a digitized form of various levels of bookkeeping and accounting practices needed by businesses.
• Basically, there are three main types of certifications available for bookkeepers.
• She is a former Google Tech Entrepreneur and she holds an MSc in International Marketing from Edinburgh Napier University.

Let’s jump into the differences between basic bookkeeping and full service bookkeeping— and how to choose the best option for you based on your needs and budget. When you hire one of these firms, the usual process is that they’ll give you a quote estimating how many hours it will take them to do your books, and what the cost for that will be. Keep in mind that this is often not binding – meaning it might take a lot longer than they think it will, which means your costs would be a lot higher than the quote. A common rule of thumb is that the real cost of an employee is 1.25 – 1.4x their salary – and possibly higher, depending on your local market conditions. That said, being outside a major metro doesn’t necessarily mean low salaries. Rural bookkeepers can sometimes charge a premium, because there are fewer local providers with their skills and expertise.

What it Costs to Work with an Online Bookkeeping Service Provider

We take the hassle out of account payable management, ensuring everyone gets paid on time. As a small business owner, you can rely on our bookkeeping virtual assistants for all your payroll needs. From processing employee payments to managing employee benefits, we ensure to take care of everything. You won’t have to pay additional benefits or overhead costs when you hire a bookkeeper from one of these services. According to a report by GrowthForce, hiring a full-charge bookkeeper from a traditional bookkeeping firm can cost you a whopping amount of $35,000 to $55,000 per year.

At BELAY, we’ve provided remote services from all over the U.S. for 10 years. We work hard to evaluate the necessary tools and technologies that support remote work relationships while providing the how to find your landlord key checks and balances needed in bookkeeping. At BELAY, our current length of service with our bookkeepers is 25 months – though we have many bookkeepers that have been with us five years and more.

Basic Services ($300 – $500+ per month):

Discover what it takes to be a bookkeeper, including the duties and qualifications of the role, with our sample templates for job descriptions. Whether you’re looking for work or to hire, read the blog to learn more. When I’m not writing you can find me curled up with a book & a cup of hot coffee, exploring the city’s newest restaurants for my food blog, and spending any other free time I have on the beach. At Wishup, we understand the importance of keeping your financial information secure. Apart from signing NDAs, we make sure to use secure servers and data encryption to keep your data away from prying eyes.

With an organized bookkeeping process, you’ll have all your financial documents in order and be better prepared for tax season. Go for professionals who have already worked with similar businesses. It’s also important to make sure they have experience in accounting software you use. This doesn’t include the benefits that can cost up to 20% of their salary. They keep your financial books in order by tracking the revenue and expenditure This is achieved by performing data entry in accounting software.

How is Bookkeeping Different than Accounting?

The average base salary of an in-house bookkeeper is ​​$42,000 – $46,000. (Based on data from Bureau of Labor Statistics, Salary, Payscale, Glassdoor, and Indeed.) This comes out to $3,200 – $3,520 per month, or an average hourly wage of $20 – $22. We offer an unprecedented level of quality for a fixed monthly fee, allowing companies to focus on growing their revenue while we handle all the daily, monthly, and annual financial work.

On the other hand, larger companies with a higher volume of complex transactions will need more hours. An outside bookkeeper will charge them at the higher end of the range. Let’s compare the cost of an in-house bookkeeper vs. an outsourced bookkeeper.

Education Level

Outsourcing also offers many benefits that you can’t get with an in-house bookkeeper. If you’re growing, the outsourced bookkeeping service should be able to help you scale by adding full service accounting when you are ready for it. Ideally, hire part time bookkeepers when you can do some of the accounting yourself, and could use extra help for employee timesheets, accounts payable, and accounts receivable tracking. Even if you hire a part time bookkeeper, your management would still have to review their work.

This professional is expected to manage all facets of the company’s bookkeeping affairs. Hiring a traditional bookkeeping firm to manage your finances can be costly for a small business owner. Since these firms operate in the traditional sense, you will have to pay a fixed monthly fee along with several other expenses like security deposits and more. The average hourly rate for freelance bookkeepers ranges from $26.91 to $43.57. Depending on your geographic location, this amount will be more or less than the average national rate of $34.67 per hour. Another option is to work as an in-house bookkeeper, which typically earn a salary of $49,672 per year, or the national average of $24 per hour.

At Milestone, we can help you with all your bookkeeping and accounting needs and provide a customizable and scalable solution that fits you perfectly. Our approach is true collaboration, working side by side with you to help your business be as successful as possible. Danielle Bauter is a writer for the Accounting division of Fit Small Business. She has owned Check Yourself, a bookkeeping and payroll service that specializes in small business, for over twenty years.

We know every form you need and every deduction you can take to pay less this year. It can be time-consuming to research how to stay on top of your books — not to mention best practices for developing a financial system from scratch. If you’re still on the fence about hiring a bookkeeper, here are a few extra considerations to keep in mind. You’ll also get access to your very own tax assistant who can answer your tax and bookkeeping questions. Ultimately, these are all different ways bookkeepers help drive profitability and growth.