How Much Do Accountants Charge? Averages & How to Set Prices

If your monthly average is $10,001-50,000, the monthly price for QuickBooks Live is $300. If your monthly average is $0-10,000 per month, the monthly price for QuickBooks Live is $200. If you invoke the guarantee, QuickBooks will conduct an evaluation of the Live Bookkeeper’s work. Every report accessible in the Bench platform can be exported to an Excel file for easy sharing with anyone from business partners to accountants. Once you securely connect your financial accounts to the Bench platform, we’ll pair you with a dedicated bookkeeper.

  • Remember, more specialized services can demand a higher rate of pay.
  • We’ve provided this information for educational purposes, and it does not constitute tax, legal, or accounting advice.
  • Hopefully, you now have a better idea of what bookkeeping services you can afford and which services come with a lower or higher bookkeeper cost.

Don’t be fearful of having conversations about raising rates with long-term clients. If they value your relationship and the service you provide, they’ll understand why you make  occasional and reasonable increases. As a bookkeeper, you can and should leverage your experience to increase your profit. If you’ve been working in the industry for 10 years, for example, you’ll have the client base, referrals, references, and body of work to quote a higher rate. With tech taking up so much airspace in modern accounting, those who are fluent users are quickly outpacing those who aren’t.

Many times you’ll be discovering things about the business as you get to know your client, and you may even find some issues your client didn’t know were there. The average small business spends between $1,150 to $1,400 per month on bookkeeping. The least amount you can expect to pay in bookkeeping fees is $348 a month.

Bookkeeper salary and hourly cost by state

Basic bookkeeping duties also include managing vendors and reconciling accounts payable and receivable. According to the survey, monthly accounting fees for a small business typically range from $1,000 to $5,000.If you’re a startup business owner; don’t forget to budget for accounting expenses. If you’ve been an owner for a while, it could be time to reexamine accounting expenses.

  • A client with a higher income is going to be able to afford a higher price tag for a bookkeeper, and your workload will be quite a bit higher than a small or medium client.
  • As a small business owner, spending this kind of money could be a challenge.
  • Once I’ve spent some time in their books, I usually like to transition to the next method.
  • A good CPA should be able to analyze your specific tax situation and look for ways to help you save money on your taxes.

Typically, you’ll want to charge your more frequent clients at a lower rate because you’re seeing them more often and reviewing their books on a regular basis. For one-time clients, you may decide to charge more since you know they may not return and have last-minute requests and needs. Chances are, clients are going to be more willing to pay an accounting firm more money over another if they have more experience.

Andrew Jordan, Chief Operations Officer at FinancePal

In a survey by PracticeWeb, 66% of clients surveyed said they would pay more for a ‘tech-savvy’ accountant. Value-based pricing, instead, rewards experience and tech fluency. It’s the future in a changing accounting industry, where you can utilize tech to increase efficiency and output.

Why Would You Charge for an Initial Consult?

Create some price strategy processes to avoid three potential pitfalls. With a tiered structure, each package provides incrementally more value. Significantly grow your bank account with this small shift in focus. Connecting your fees to time causes, what I call, an upper limit challenge.

Customer Service Terms Every Small Business Owner Must Know

Self-employed bookkeepers can charge clients $35 or more per hour. However, the rates can vary drastically depending on the state. FreshBooks is an invoicing basic approach to process costing in cost accounting and accounting software for small businesses. Business owners who wish to automate their financial tasks can use some of the latest tools on the market.

However, there are slightly more sophisticated ways to package your bookkeeping services that encourage repeat clients, and maximize profits. It allows you to adjust your fees without painting yourself into a corner, which can happen if you provide quotes to clients when you don’t know the details of their business. With an hourly rate, unless you can find more hours in the day, it’s difficult—borderline impossible—to drive up profit significantly.

Basic Services ($300 – $500+ per month):

This is the most common way to charge for your bookkeeping services, especially when you first start out. Businesses typically expect certain services to be part of bookkeeping, but providing additional offerings that add value to your clients’ businesses can justify charging a higher fee. These tasks might require different certifications, specialized skills, or additional time, which means they can be billed at a different rate. Becoming certified in your accounting software is a green light for business owners. They’ll be more inclined to pay higher fees if they see you’ve been endorsed by well-known software companies, especially if it’s the software that they use for their accounts.

For example, let’s say you spend about five hours a month on bookkeeping, and your average hourly rate is $75. A full charge bookkeeper has a larger responsibility and full oversight over a company’s finances. They advise, oversee payroll and prepare financial reports. If you’re not there already, it’s worth upskilling to get to that point, as you’ll be able to justify higher pricing packages. Again, the best course of action for you to take when setting prices is doing your research.

If you’re interested to learn more, Google it, and I’m sure a plethora of information will show up. Many bookkeepers charge their clients for initial consultations because it gives them a chance to look at the books. This gives them an opportunity to let the client know just how much they will need to charge to take over their bookkeeping.

If your monthly average is $10,001-50,000, the monthly price for QuickBooks Live is $300. If your monthly average is $0-10,000 per month, the monthly price for QuickBooks Live is $200. If you invoke the guarantee, QuickBooks will conduct an evaluation of the Live Bookkeeper’s work. Every report accessible in the Bench platform can be exported…