Ask ten business owners what a bookkeeper costs and you will get ten different answers, because they are all describing different things. One is paying for software and doing the work themselves. One has a cousin who does it for cash. One pays a firm a flat fee every month and never thinks about it again. They are not wrong, they are just buying different levels of help.
So the honest answer to "how much does a bookkeeper cost" is that it depends on what you actually need. This is a plain look at the ranges you will run into, what moves the number up or down, and how to tell which option fits a business your size.
The three ways small businesses pay for bookkeeping
There are really three models, and most owners end up in one of them.
One option is doing it yourself with software. QuickBooks, Xero, or a similar tool costs somewhere in the range of $30 to $90 a month depending on the plan. That number looks small, and the software is genuinely capable. What it does not do is the actual work. You do. Every hour you spend categorizing transactions and chasing down a receipt is an hour you are not running the business.
A second path is hiring a freelance or part-time bookkeeper who bills by the hour. Hourly rates vary widely, and the total you pay in a given month rises and falls with how much activity there is. This can work well for a very small operation with light bookkeeping. The downside is that the bill is unpredictable, and hourly billing rewards taking longer rather than working faster.
The third setup is a monthly flat fee. You pay one set amount, and the provider handles the categorizing, the reconciling, and the monthly reports. For most small businesses that have moved past the very early stage, this is the arrangement that makes the most sense, because the price is predictable and the incentive is to be efficient, not slow.
What actually drives the price
Whatever model you choose, the same few factors decide where you land in the range.
Transaction volume is the big one. A business running 40 transactions a month is a very different job from one running 800. More activity means more to categorize, more to reconcile, and more to check.
The number of accounts matters too. Every bank account, credit card, and payment platform, such as Stripe, Square, or PayPal, is another account that has to be reconciled every month. Two accounts is simple. Seven is real work.
Then there is the state of the books when you start. Current, clean books are cheaper to maintain than books that have not been touched in eight months. If there is a backlog, most providers handle that as a separate catch-up project before regular monthly service begins.
Finally, the extras. Payroll, sales tax filings for sales into Massachusetts or Vermont, and year-end tax preparation are usually priced on top of core monthly bookkeeping, because they are separate jobs. A quote that bundles everything and a quote that lists them separately can describe the same total, so read what is actually included.
What the cheap option really costs
The tempting move is to skip all of this and keep doing the books yourself, or to let them slide. On paper that is the cheapest option. In practice it has a bill of its own, it just shows up later.
Books that fall behind turn into a scramble every April. Missed deductions mean you hand more to the tax preparer's software than you owed. Late or wrong filings can bring penalties, and those are real dollars that a clean set of books would have avoided. And the hours you spend wrestling with QuickBooks at 10pm have a value, even if no invoice ever names it.
None of that means every business needs a bookkeeper on day one. It means the honest comparison is not "software versus a service." It is "what my time and my mistakes cost versus what help costs."
Want a straight number for your business, not a range?
Book a free consultation and we will look at your accounts and give you a real quote.
A rough guide for a small business in New Hampshire, Vermont, or Massachusetts
Pinning an exact figure without seeing your books would be a guess, and a guess is not much use. There is a fair way to think about it, though.
If you are a solo operator with one bank account and light activity, software plus a few hours of your own time each month may genuinely be enough for now. If you have employees, more than a couple of accounts, or you sell across state lines and deal with Massachusetts or Vermont sales tax, the math usually tips toward a monthly service, because the complexity is exactly where mistakes get expensive.
The businesses that get the most out of paying for bookkeeping are the ones that were losing time and accuracy doing it themselves. When the books are handled, tax season stops being a fire drill, and you get a clear read on the business every month instead of a shoebox of receipts in the spring. If you are weighing the timing, the signs it is time to hire a bookkeeper are worth a look.
If you want to know what it would cost for your specific situation, that is what a free consultation is for. We handle monthly bookkeeping, catch-up and cleanup for books that have fallen behind, and tax preparation and filing, and we will tell you plainly which of those you actually need.
One honest note: the ranges above are general market figures, not a Ledger House price list, and they move with the details of your business. The only way to get an accurate number is to look at your actual accounts, which we are happy to do for free.
