How much runs through the books
The count of transactions hitting your accounts each month. This is the single biggest driver, and it is why a busy practice and a quiet one do not pay the same thing.
The question everyone asks first
What does a bookkeeper cost? Here is a straight answer.
Most bookkeeping websites will not give you a number. You get a contact form and a discovery call, and you are three conversations in before anyone says a figure out loud. This page is the version we would want if we were the ones looking.
A twenty minute call, not a pitch.
The short answer
Prime Numbers charges between $495 and $4,000 a month
The low end is a practice with straightforward books and a handful of accounts. The high end is fractional chief financial officer work, where the monthly conversation about what the numbers mean matters more than the reconciling underneath it. Most people land nearer the bottom than they expect.
Those are the published packages and you can read all of them, including the separate set for non-profit organizations. We would rather you see the number now and decide whether it is worth a call than find it out on the call.
What follows is the part that applies whoever you hire: what actually moves the price, and what to ask before you agree to anything.
See the packagesWhat moves the number
Five things, and only one of them is negotiable
Any honest quote is built from these. If someone gives you a price without asking about them, they are guessing and the number will change.
How many accounts reconcile
Every bank account, card, loan and merchant processor is another thing to match and tie out each month. Three accounts is a different job from ten.
Whether payroll is in it
Payroll is its own discipline, with filings and deposits on their own schedule. How many people and how often you run it both matter.
The state of the books today
If there is a backlog, that is cleanup, and cleanup is separate work with an end date. It should never be folded into your monthly figure.
How much you want to know
Reconciled books are the floor. Reports you can read, a monthly conversation about what changed, a cash flow forecast - each one is more of someone's attention. This is the part you actually get to choose.
Two ways it gets quoted
Hourly and flat monthly are not the same offer
Hourly sounds fair and usually is not, for one structural reason: the longer the work takes, the more it pays. Nobody sets out to be slow, but you are the one carrying the risk of a messy month, and you cannot budget for a number you will not see until it arrives.
A flat monthly figure moves that risk to the bookkeeper. If a month is harder than expected, that is their problem to solve. You know in January what December costs.
- Ask which one you are being quoted before you compare two prices
- An hourly rate and a monthly package are not comparable numbers
- If it is hourly, ask what a typical month has actually run
- If it is flat, ask what falls outside it and gets billed separately
The expensive mistake
The most common way people overpay is not the bookkeeper
A certified public accountant and a bookkeeper do different jobs. Your accountant files your return using whatever the books say. A bookkeeper is the reason the books say something true.
When there is no bookkeeper, that work does not disappear. It waits until March and lands on your accountant's desk, and it gets done at accountant rates. People in that position often believe they are saving money by not hiring a bookkeeper, and the saving is going out the other door in a single invoice every spring.
The test is simple. Ask your accountant how much of your bill last year was fixing the books rather than filing the return. If the answer is most of it, you are already paying for bookkeeping, just at the wrong rate and eleven months too late to be useful.
Before you hire anyone
Four questions worth asking, including of us
None of these are trick questions. They are just the ones that separate a real quote from a number somebody made up to win the call.
Will you look at my file before you quote?
A price given without opening the books is a guess, and guesses get revised once the work starts. Anyone quoting sight unseen is either padding the number or about to raise it.
Is cleanup quoted separately?
If your books need catching up, that is finite work with an end. Folded into a monthly rate, it quietly becomes permanent and you keep paying for it long after it is done.
Who actually does the work each month?
At some firms the person selling you is not the person touching your file, and the person touching your file changes. Worth knowing which you are buying.
What do I get, and when do I get it?
Reconciled accounts and a set of reports by a specific date each month is an answer. Ongoing support is not an answer.
Still asking
The follow-up questions
Why will most bookkeepers not put a price on their website?
Some of it is reasonable. The honest version is that the number genuinely depends on volume and complexity, and a single figure on a page will be wrong for somebody. The less reasonable version is that a price on a page loses them the chance to find out what you can afford first. Prime Numbers publishes its packages because we would rather spend the call on your books than on the reveal.
Is a cheaper bookkeeper worse?
Not necessarily, and not automatically. A genuinely simple set of books does not need an expensive package, and anyone selling you one is overselling. What matters more than the number is whether the person quoting it looked at your file first, and whether they can tell you what falls outside the price.
How much does cleanup cost?
It depends on how far behind things are and how tangled they got, which is why we will not put a figure here. What we will commit to is that it gets quoted separately from any monthly work, in writing, after we have seen the file, and that it has an end date rather than becoming part of your monthly bill.
Do I need monthly bookkeeping, or just a cleanup once a year?
Some businesses genuinely only need a cleanup and a check-in, and we will tell you if you are one of them. Monthly earns its cost when the books are informing decisions during the year rather than being assembled for a tax return after it. If you are only ever looking at the numbers in April, you are paying for history.
Does it cost more if my books are a mess right now?
The cleanup costs something, yes, but the monthly figure afterwards is based on the ongoing work, not on how bad it was when you arrived. Nobody gets charged a permanent premium for the state of their books on day one. That is the normal starting point for most people who call.
Get a real number
Find out what your books would actually cost
Twenty minutes, and we will look at the file before we say a figure. Often the answer is a smaller package than people were bracing for.
A twenty minute call, not a pitch.
Or call (737) 320-4970, text the same number, or email matthew.fasl@primenumbersbookkeeping.com.