How much does a bookkeeper cost per month?

Handing the books to a service is a flat monthly fee, and the fee grows with the work. Published plans start at $99 at Pilot, with Bench at $199 for its lightest plan and Xendoo at $395. If you are weighing paying for bookkeeping help against doing it yourself, hourly pay for bookkeepers gives the wage side, and bookkeeping outsourcing ranks the services.

I have priced services out for the three businesses and have not hired one. The numbers below are the published ones.

What moves the price

Three things move a monthly fee: how many bank and card accounts the service reads, how many months need cleanup, and whether tax work is bundled. Xendoo, for instance, ties its plans to the number of accounts, with Growth at $695 and Scale at $995. Bench jumps from $399 for bookkeeping to $649 once tax is added.

Pilot’s entry plan is cash-basis bookkeeping from bank and card data, and Pilot’s strengths and gaps show what its higher tiers add. Past cleanup, catch-up and cleanup questions cover the one-time work that sits outside a monthly fee. A shop that sells online should look at bookkeepers for ecommerce brands, since the platforms add accounts.

Who pays more

A café has more to record each day. Daily sales summaries and tips add entries, so tips, tills and food cost in the books is worth reading before asking for a quote. A backlog does the same: fixing a bookkeeping backlog can mean a separate catch-up fee, which Xendoo sells as an add-on to its plans. The published rates are collected on the service pages.

Before you sign

Ask what the plan covers and what it leaves out. An accountant adds tax advice that a bookkeeper does not, so bookkeeper or accountant is a useful question to settle first. If software could do the recording for less, an overall accounting ranking shows the options. Every question so far is on one page if a related topic comes up.