Doing it in house costs a month
$262.24
Wages from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (May 2025). Service prices are each provider’s lowest published plan that fits your revenue, read on their pricing pages on November 10, 2026; the lowest here is $199.00 a month. Benefits, state payroll taxes, software and catch-up work aren’t included.
For a small business in the US, bookkeeping costs roughly $200 to $400 a month with an outsourced bookkeeping service, or the hours it takes at about $24 an hour if a clerk does it in house. A bookkeeping clerk earned a median $24.36 an hour, or $50,670 a year, in May 2025 (Bureau of Labor Statistics). If you hire one, you also pay the employer’s 6.2% Social Security and 1.45% Medicare (IRS Topic 751), plus benefits and state payroll taxes.
So 10 hours of bookkeeping a month cost $262.24 with a part-time clerk, before benefits. The same 10 hours are worth $243.60 of your own time at that wage, and more if your hour is worth more to your business.
The lowest published monthly price of each service, read on its pricing page on November 10, 2026:
| Bookkeeping service | A month | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Bench, Bookkeeping Light | $199.00 | for $250K a year in revenue or less |
| Finaloop, Starter | $245.00 | ecommerce, up to $1M revenue, 4 years in business or less |
| Merritt Bookkeeping | $250.00 | one flat plan |
| Pilot, Core | $299.00 | billed annually, up to $15K monthly expenses; $399 billed monthly |
| QuickBooks Live Full-Service Bookkeeping | $300.00 | as of May 2026, up to $10K monthly expenses; QuickBooks Online and a cleanup fee extra |
| Bench, Bookkeeping | $399.00 | growing businesses |
| Bookkeeper360 | $400.00 | from $400, custom quote |
Most outsourced bookkeeping services also charge for catch-up work if your books are behind, for example $200 per month of catch-up at Merritt Bookkeeping or from $1,000 at Bookkeeper360. Tax preparation and payroll are usually extra: Bench’s plan with taxes costs $649 a month. Some providers, such as Ignite Spot, publish no prices and give a bookkeeping quote after a call.
How many hours a month data entry, categorizing transactions and reconciling accounts take you today.
Keep the US median for bookkeeping clerks, or enter what a freelance bookkeeper quoted you.
Some services limit their lowest price by revenue. The calculator shows only the ones that fit.
Bookkeepers use three pricing models. A freelance bookkeeper often uses hourly billing, which suits small or irregular work but makes the monthly bookkeeping cost hard to predict. Most outsourced bookkeeping services charge a fixed monthly fee for an agreed scope of work. And some set the price by transaction volume or monthly expenses: Pilot’s Core plan costs $299 a month billed annually for up to $15,000 in monthly expenses and rises in steps, and QuickBooks Live Full-Service Bookkeeping cost $300, $500 or $700 a month by monthly expenses as of May 2026.
Before you hire a bookkeeper, ask what the scope of work includes: transaction categorization, reconciling bank and credit card accounts, accounts payable and receivable, monthly financial statements such as the balance sheet, and how often you get financial reporting. Tax prep is usually a separate fee. Ask also which accounting software they work in, usually QuickBooks Online or Xero, and whether its subscription is included.
An in-house bookkeeper or a dedicated bookkeeper on your payroll makes sense when there is a full job’s worth of work: payroll processing, accounts payable and daily cash flow questions. For a small business, compare the hours a clerk would need with a service’s fixed monthly fee: outsourced bookkeeping carries no payroll taxes or benefits, and the calculator above shows the difference for your hours.
Online stores have high transaction volume. Each Stripe or Shopify Payments payout bundles many orders, minus fees and refunds, so someone has to split every deposit into sales, fees and refunds before the books are right. That is extra work a service business doesn’t have. The free Stripe payout breakdown and Shopify payout breakdown do that split from the export, and the Shopify fee calculator shows what the payment fees themselves cost.
Heft reads Stripe, Shopify Payments and WooCommerce, read-only, matches every payout to the orders, fees and refunds behind it, finds the deposit in your bank and collects the receipt for each payment. Its receipt plans prepare the month for your accountant. The books for US companies are being built.
Wages are from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for May 2025. Service prices are the providers’ own, read November 10, 2026, except QuickBooks Live (Internet Archive copy of May 13, 2026). Prices change, so check before you sign.