A bookkeeper costs anywhere from $50 an hour to $1,500 a month. Here is the real range, and the much cheaper option most small businesses now have.
The ranges
- Freelance bookkeeper: $40 to $100 an hour; a small business is usually 4 to 10 hours a month, so $200 to $1,000.
- Bookkeeping firm, monthly package: $300 to $1,500 depending on transaction volume.
- Online services: Bench from $199 a month, Pilot from $499, Xendoo from $395, Bookkeeper360 from $399.
- Bookkeeping add-ons from ledger vendors: $149 to $400 a month on top of the subscription.
- Catch-up and cleanup: $500 to $5,000 as a one-off.
What you are paying for
Mostly categorization and reconciliation, which is volume work. The judgment parts (tax strategy, entity structure) are a small fraction of the hours and are better bought from a CPA directly.
The alternative
AI bookkeeping from your statements: $20 a month, billed annually, plus about 25 cents per transaction, with 10 free every day. A business with 150 transactions a month pays the $240 and nothing else. A business with 600 a month pays about $1,100 a year, against $4,800 to $18,000 for a human. If you want what a bookkeeper actually delivers, a reconciled balance sheet every month, Full Books is $99 a month, billed annually, still a fraction of the human.