What monthly bookkeeping costs a small business, and what a flat fee should cover

The short answer on price

Our own published FAQ says most small businesses pay between $200 and $800 per month for full-service outsourced bookkeeping, with busier companies above that range. Where you land depends mainly on how many transactions you have, how many bank and credit card accounts we reconcile, and how complex the business is. A good flat fee covers the full monthly cycle: recording, categorizing, reconciling and reporting, not just data entry.

I would rather explain what moves that number than quote one blind, because two businesses with the same revenue can need very different amounts of work. A consultant with one checking account and forty transactions a month is a small job. A restaurant with three card processors, a payroll every week and a dozen vendors is not, even if the two report similar sales.

This guide walks through the drivers, what should be inside the fee, what is normally quoted separately, and how to compare proposals so you are not choosing on the monthly number alone.

Five things that move a bookkeeping quote up or down

When we write a proposal, we look at the same handful of factors for every client. None of them is about how large the company sounds. They are about how many hours a careful month actually takes.

Transaction volume is the biggest one. Every deposit, card swipe, bill and transfer has to be categorized and later matched during reconciliation. The number of accounts comes next, because each bank account, credit card and loan is reconciled separately against its own statement. After that come the features that add layers: payroll, inventory, sales tax, fixed assets, or more than one entity or location.

Industry plays a part too, mostly through those layers. A real estate investor with several properties needs income and expenses split by property. A contractor may need costs tracked by job. A medical or professional practice may have insurance deposits that arrive in batches and have to be matched to the right period. None of this is exotic, but each adds steps to the month, and an honest quote reflects them instead of discovering them three months in.

• Monthly transaction count across all accounts
• Number of bank accounts, credit cards and loans to reconcile
• Accounts payable work, such as entering and scheduling vendor bills
• Accounts receivable work, such as invoicing and tracking who has not paid
• Extra layers: payroll, inventory, sales tax, multiple entities or locations

What the monthly fee should include

Ask every firm for a written list of what the fee covers. If the list is vague, the bill will not be. In our case, the bookkeeping fee covers bank and credit card reconciliation, accounts payable and receivable, categorizing transactions for tax purposes, coordinating with payroll, tracking fixed assets and depreciation, sales tax filing where it applies, and the year-end close that prepares the books for the tax return.

The output matters as much as the work. Each month you should receive a profit and loss statement, a balance sheet and a cash flow report, built from accounts that have actually been reconciled. Custom reports, such as a KPI dashboard, an accounts receivable aging report or a profit and loss by department, can be added when they help you run the business. You should also keep full access to your own QuickBooks file, because the books belong to you, not to the firm.

• Bank and credit card reconciliation every month
• Accounts payable and accounts receivable
• Categorization that lines up with your tax return
• Monthly profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow report
• Fixed asset and depreciation tracking
• Year-end close and handoff to tax preparation
• Your own login to your own books

Usually priced separately, so ask

Some work is a different job with a different workload, so most firms quote it on its own line. That is not a trick to make the bookkeeping fee look small; it lets you buy only what you need and compare each piece honestly. Payroll processing, with its tax filings, direct deposits and year-end W-2s, is usually separate. So is preparing the business tax return and any individual returns. Tax resolution work, such as answering an IRS notice or setting up a payment plan, is priced by the problem rather than by the month.

Cleanup is the other big one. If the books are months or years behind, the catch-up is a project with its own quote before monthly service begins. Our bookkeeping page notes that cleanup engagements can cost three to five times more than ongoing bookkeeping when a tax preparer has to rebuild the books at year-end, which is one reason I push owners to keep a monthly routine. If you are in that position now, I wrote a separate guide on catching up books that are months behind before a deadline.

Flat monthly fee or hourly billing

Hourly billing is not dishonest, but it puts the uncertainty on you. If the month was messy, you pay more, and you often find out after the fact. It also creates a quiet incentive to avoid asking questions, because every phone call has a meter running.

A flat fee means the firm has studied your volume and accounts and agreed to carry the risk of a slow month. You can call with a question without wondering what it will cost. The tradeoff is that the fee has to be reviewed when the business changes. If you add a location, double your transactions or start carrying inventory, expect the proposal to be updated, and expect a good firm to tell you why in plain terms.

We set our fee in writing after a free 30-minute consultation, and the firm's stated policy is no surprise invoices. Whatever firm you choose, get that written scope and price before any work starts, and make sure it names the accounts and services it covers so there is no argument later about what was included.

Outsourcing compared with hiring someone in-house

Owners often ask whether they should hire a part-time or full-time bookkeeper instead. Our bookkeeping page puts an in-house bookkeeper at $50,000 to $70,000 a year plus benefits, compared with $2,400 to $9,600 a year for outsourced service at the published monthly range. The gap narrows if your business genuinely needs someone on site every day, for example to handle a front desk, receive inventory or chase invoices by phone.

There is also a depth question. One employee is one person with one set of skills, who takes vacations and sometimes leaves. An outsourced team brings bookkeepers, a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor and tax preparers who work from the same books, so year-end does not depend on whether one person remembered to record a loan correctly. For many companies across Dallas–Fort Worth, the right answer is an office manager who handles daily admin plus an outside firm that owns the monthly close.

How to compare two proposals fairly

Put the proposals side by side and line up the scope, not the price. A cheaper quote that reconciles only the main checking account, delivers reports quarterly and bills extra for questions is not cheaper. A more expensive one that includes accounts payable, sales tax filing and a named bookkeeper may be the better value. Read the questions to ask an outsourced bookkeeper before you sign anything, and check these points on each proposal.

• Which accounts are reconciled, and how often
• Which reports you receive, and by what day of the month
• Whether accounts payable, receivable and sales tax are inside the fee
• Who your bookkeeper is, and how fast questions get answered
• How cleanup, payroll and tax returns are priced
• What triggers a fee change, and how much notice you get

Signs you are paying for the wrong thing

The most expensive bookkeeping is the kind you pay for and cannot use. If the reports arrive late in the following month or not at all, you are paying for history rather than information. If the accounts say reconciled but the balance sheet does not match the bank, the work is not finished. If the tax preparer has to make dozens of adjustments every spring, the books were not built for the return. And if every question to your bookkeeper takes a week to answer, the low fee is being paid for with your time.

The opposite mistake is buying more than you need. A company with simple finances does not need a weekly dashboard or a controller. It needs clean monthly books, on time, and a person who answers the phone. As the business grows and decisions get bigger, that is when deeper analysis, or a fractional CFO for cash planning, starts to pay for itself.

Getting a number for your own business

The fastest way to a real price is a short conversation with your statements in front of you. We ask how many accounts you have, roughly how many transactions run through them each month, whether you run payroll, collect sales tax or carry inventory, and how current the books are. From that we write a flat-fee proposal that lists exactly what is included.

Once you approve it, onboarding takes about one to two weeks: we set up or repair the QuickBooks file, connect the bank feeds and clean up any historical issues. Then the monthly cycle begins, with reports each month and quarterly check-ins. If you want to see what that cycle looks like in detail, read about what happens during a monthly close. We serve clients in person from Plano, Garland and Flower Mound and remotely across the Dallas area and beyond.

Questions people ask me