What it costs, and what decides that.
You'll get a specific number in writing before any work begins. Here's what goes into it.
What drives a fee.
Every business arrives with a different volume, a different backlog and a different set of filings. Rather than post a number that would be wrong for most people, here's exactly what we look at when we quote.
- 01
Transaction volume
How many transactions run through the business each month, and across how many accounts. This is the single biggest driver of bookkeeping cost.
- 02
How far behind things are
Cleanup is quoted separately from ongoing work, because it's a one-off project with a defined end.
- 03
Entity and filing complexity
A Schedule C is not an 1120-S. More entities, more states or more owners means more work.
- 04
Payroll
Whether payroll is in scope, how many people are on it, and how often it runs.
- 05
How often we talk
An annual filing relationship costs less than quarterly planning, which costs less than a monthly advisory cadence.
What a proposal includes
- The scope — what is and isn't covered, in plain terms
- The fee, and whether it's one-off or ongoing
- When the work starts and what we need from you to begin
- Who you'll be dealing with
Why there is no price on this page
Not evasiveness, and not a sales tactic to force a call. A figure quoted before anyone has looked at your records is a guess, and a guess resolves in one of two ways: a revision later, or corners cut to make the original number work. Neither is good for the person who agreed to it.
The variation is genuinely large. Two businesses with the same revenue, the same number of employees and the same number of months outstanding can be an order of magnitude apart in effort, depending on how many accounts there are, whether statements are obtainable, how much personal activity is mixed in, whether prior work was done and how well, and how many transactions need a decision rather than a categorization.
What you get instead is a specific figure in writing before any work starts, based on an actual look at your situation. If that is not what a provider offers, it is worth asking why.
What a proposal actually contains
The document is what governs the engagement, not a description on a website. It should be specific enough that you could hand it to someone else and they would know exactly what was agreed.
IN EVERY SCOPE WE SEND
- What is included, listed as tasks rather than categories
- What is explicitly not included
- What we need from you, and by when
- What you receive, and how often
- The fee, and what would cause it to change
- Who does the work and who to contact
If the scope needs to change later — usually because a backlog turns out deeper than it looked — that is a conversation and a revised document, not a surprise on an invoice.
Cleanup is priced separately from ongoing work
These are different things and quoting them together hides the shape of what you are buying.
A clean-up is a one-off project with a defined end: get the records to a reliable state, current to a stated date. Ongoing bookkeeping is a recurring service that keeps them there. Bundling them into a single monthly figure makes the ongoing cost look higher than it is and obscures when the one-off part finishes.
It also matters because the decision after a clean-up is genuinely open. Some businesses move to monthly bookkeeping, some keep it in-house with a clearer process, and some genuinely only need an annual exercise. That decision is easier with the finished picture in front of you, and easier still when the two costs were never conflated.
How to compare two quotes
This is the part that is genuinely difficult, and it is not difficult because providers are being evasive. It is because the same words describe different amounts of work.
Two quotes for monthly bookkeeping can differ several-fold and both be reasonable: one may cover categorization from a bank feed, the other reconciliation, a monthly close, and a person who asks questions when something looks wrong. Both are sold as monthly bookkeeping. The difference only becomes visible when something goes wrong, or at year end when one set of books needs rebuilding and the other does not.
So compare on what specifically happens each period rather than on the figure. Two questions separate a bookkeeping service from a categorization service: are the accounts reconciled to statements, and is the period closed afterwards.
ASK ANY PROVIDER
- What exactly is done each period, and what is not?
- Are the accounts reconciled against statements?
- Is the period closed, so the numbers stop moving?
- What happens when a transaction cannot be identified?
- Will you tell me during the year if something looks wrong?
- What would cause this price to change?
What you are really weighing it against
The useful comparison is not the fee against nothing. It is the fee against what the alternative actually costs.
That includes your own hours at whatever they are worth, the cost of reconstructing a year at filing time instead of closing twelve months as you go, and the harder-to-quantify cost of decisions made without information because getting the information would take a weekend nobody has.
For some businesses that comparison clearly favors hiring. For others it does not, and it should be allowed to say so — if the absence of help is not currently costing you anything, waiting is a reasonable answer and it is one you will get here.
Two providers can offer the same thing and mean very different work.
Ask what specifically happens each period, whether the accounts are reconciled, and whether the period is closed. Those answers separate a bookkeeping service from a categorization service.
What owners ask about pricing.
- Why aren't prices listed on the site?
- Because a number posted without knowing your transaction volume, entity or backlog would be wrong in one direction or the other. You'll get a specific figure in writing after a short conversation — before any work starts.
- Will the price change once you start?
- Not without a conversation first. If the scope turns out to be different from what we quoted — usually because the backlog is deeper than it looked — we come back to you before doing the extra work.
Get a figure for your actual situation.
Pricing depends on the state of the records and what the business needs. Tell us both and you get a scope and a price in writing before anything starts.
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