What is a typical hourly rate for a bookkeeper?
The median bookkeeping clerk earns $24.36 an hour, a figure that leaves out self-employed bookkeepers, so a freelancer’s rate can differ.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median wage for bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks at $24.36 an hour, or $50,670 a year. The median is the wage at which half of the workers in an occupation earned more and half earned less.
That is an employee wage. The survey behind it does not include pay for self-employed workers, so it says little about what a freelancer or a bookkeeping business quotes.
Why a quote can look different
A freelancer or a firm sets its own rate, so a quote is not the federal wage. I have priced out handing the books to a service and have not hired one, and the wage was the useful starting point for judging any quote. Recording versus interpreting matters here too, because an hour of recording and an hour of advice are different work.
What an hourly rate leaves out
- Monthly pricing. Some providers quote by the month instead of the hour, which is the question behind what monthly bookkeeping runs.
- Backlog work. A pile of unrecorded months is a different job from a steady one. When the books are months behind the first question is size, and questions about falling behind cover the rest.
- Online stores. Payouts, fees and refunds add work, and outsourced books for online stores is a category of its own.
Comparing providers
Providers differ on scope and contract terms as much as on price. Online bookkeepers compared and the scored services are the places to weigh them, and Pilot’s scorecard is one example.
Software can cut the hours too, and general accounting software picks is where that starts. If the job is new to you, what a bookkeeper actually records comes first, and bookkeeper cost answers hold the rest of the pay questions.
Common questions
Is the federal wage figure what a bookkeeping business charges?
No. The survey behind it does not include pay for self-employed workers, and a business sets its own rate.
What does the median mean here?
The median is the wage at which half of the workers in an occupation earned more and half earned less.