How much does a bookkeeper cost a contractor?
A bookkeeper on your payroll costs about $54,600 a year once you add the employer's payroll taxes to the median wage. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts that wage at $50,670 a year, or $24.36 an hour, for bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks as of May 2025. An outsourced bookkeeper charges by the hour or a flat monthly fee, and what moves that fee is how many transactions and accounts you have, whether payroll and sales tax are included, and how far behind the books are.
Those are the costs you can see on an invoice. For a contractor, the expensive ones are the other kind: your own nights at the kitchen table, and books that can't tell you which jobs made money.
What a bookkeeper on payroll costs
Here's a full-time bookkeeper at the median wage, with the federal employer taxes for 2026:
| Cost | Basis | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Wages | BLS median, May 2025 | $50,670 |
| Social Security | 6.2% of wages | $3,142 |
| Medicare | 1.45% of wages | $735 |
| Federal unemployment | 0.6% of the first $7,000, after the state credit | $42 |
| Total | before state taxes and benefits | $54,589 |
That's about $4,550 a month before state unemployment tax, workers' comp, health insurance, paid time off, a computer and the accounting software. It also buys exactly one person: when they're out sick or quit in March, the books stop. The labor burden post shows how to price the rest of an employee's costs.
How much do bookkeepers charge per hour?
The BLS figure, $24.36, is what an employee earns. A freelancer or firm billing by the hour also covers its own taxes, software, insurance and the time between clients, so expect a rate above that. Compare it with the fully loaded cost, not the wage.
Hourly billing works against a busy shop, because the messier the month, the bigger the bill. A month with 40 missing receipts and a supply house statement that doesn't match takes longer than a clean one, and you find out after the work is done. Hourly fits a one-time job with a clear scope, like setting up a new chart of accounts.
What's in a monthly bookkeeping package?
A monthly bookkeeping package is a flat fee for a defined set of work. Two quotes at the same price can cover very different jobs, so ask these before you compare them:
| Ask | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| How many bank and card accounts are covered? | Every company card is another account to reconcile |
| How often are accounts reconciled? | Monthly is the floor; weekly catches problems sooner |
| Which reports, and by what date? | A P&L on the 25th of the next month is history, not a tool |
| Is catch-up work priced separately? | If you're behind, find out before the first invoice |
| Are payroll and sales tax filings included? | If not, add them to the price you're comparing |
| Is the tax return included? | Some packages stop at the books |
| Who answers your questions? | The same person who knows your shop, or a queue |
| Whose QuickBooks file is it? | If you leave, the history should stay with you |
What moves the monthly price, at YetiBooks or anywhere:
- Transactions: every card swipe, deposit and supply house bill.
- Accounts: each bank account, credit card and loan.
- Payroll: how many people, how often you pay, and whether the bookkeeper runs it (see payroll service versus in-house).
- Sales tax: how many states or cities you file in.
- How far behind you are: catch-up work is priced on its own.
- Advice: a person who walks you through the numbers is a different job from one who emails a report.
Our price is set by your revenue, how many bank and card accounts we keep, and whether you add payroll, tax or CFO help. Our pricing page shows where plans start.
Why the cheapest bookkeeping costs more
Brandon Vaughn, who coaches home service owners, once talked with an owner who was paying his CPA about $100 a month for bookkeeping. The books got done, but everything landed in a few big buckets, and someone in his office was re-sorting all of it so the numbers could be used for a budget. Brandon's take:
Here's the thing about CPAs and bookkeepers is they'll just kind of do whatever's easiest for them. They don't necessarily do bookkeeping for your benefit as a business owner to be able to look at it and get data that says like, how can I make good decisions?
Books kept for the tax return put every expense somewhere deductible. Books kept for running the business also put your techs in cost of goods sold and every part on a job, so you can see your gross margin and which jobs paid. The chart of accounts post shows the difference.
Make sure you own the file
Whoever you hire, the books should live in an accounting file in your company's name that you can open any time. Brandon once found an owner whose bookkeeper handed over paper reports and kept nothing in the owner's own QuickBooks. His reaction:
They hold your data hostage to where you don't own your data. If you have a QuickBooks account that you're paying for, and you have a company account in there, all of your data and everything should be inside that QuickBooks account.
Ask for that in writing before the first month starts.
What doing it yourself costs
Doing your own books has no invoice, but it isn't free. Brandon puts it to owners as a choice between two wages:
What would you guys rather make 20 bucks an hour or a thousand dollars an hour? … The $20 an hour work or even $15 an hour work of entering in receipts, reconciling bank accounts, filling out a budget sheet, those types of things.
Say it's 8 hours a month on receipts and reconciliations. That's a full day you're not selling, estimating or training a tech. If your spouse does the books at night, count those hours too. Here's what a bookkeeper should take off your plate, and how the books should run week to week in a home service business.
Common questions
Is it cheaper to hire a bookkeeper or outsource?
Put the fully loaded number above next to written monthly quotes for the same work. A full-time hire makes sense when there are 40 hours a week of bookkeeping to do. If there aren't, you'd be paying for hours you don't need.
How much does a bookkeeping cleanup cost?
It depends on how many months are behind and how many accounts are involved, so get a fixed quote before work starts. When we take on a client who's behind, the books are cleaned up in about two weeks.
Bring last month's bank and card statements to a free profit call and we'll tell you what your books need and what that work involves. We keep the books for house cleaning companies, HVAC shops and every trade in between.
