Small business · Pricing
How much does a bookkeeper cost for a business?
Prices range from free to four figures a month, and the spread is not random. It comes down to whether you do the books, a piece of software helps you do the books, or a person does them for you.
WritingBy Landon LittleSeptember 6, 20266 min read
The three ways small businesses get their books done
- DIY (free): a spreadsheet or free software, and you do the categorizing yourself. SCORE, the small-business mentoring nonprofit, puts the real cost at more than 20 hours a month of an owner's time, and 60% of owners say they do not know accounting well enough to trust what they are looking at.
- Software-only ($0 to $275 a month): QuickBooks Online, Xero, or Zoho Books give you a system to enter and categorize transactions in, but you are still the one doing it. The software does not reconcile itself or catch what you miscategorized.
- A person does it for you ($250 to $1,000-plus a month): per NerdWallet, typical full-service bookkeeping runs $300 or more a month, with basic service commonly $250 to $350, mid-range $500 to $700, and premium services $1,000-plus. A real bookkeeper categorizes, reconciles, and reports, and it is off your plate.
| Tier | Typical cost | Who does the work |
|---|---|---|
| DIY | $0 | You, and about 20+ hours a month per SCORE |
| Software-only | $0-$275/mo | You, with a tool instead of a spreadsheet |
| Full-service, typical | $300+/mo | A person, per NerdWallet's 2026 figures |
| Nova Solutions | $179/mo flat | A person, not software you run yourself |
What actually separates the tiers
The jump between tiers is not really about features. A spreadsheet and QuickBooks can both technically hold the same numbers. What changes is who is responsible for getting them right every month: categorizing each transaction correctly, catching the one that got miscoded, reconciling the bank statement against what the books say actually happened.
DIY and software-only both put that responsibility on the owner. That is fine when the business is simple and the owner has the time, and it is exactly the 20-plus hours a month SCORE's research points to when it is not. A full-service option moves that responsibility to someone else, which is the entire reason it costs more than the software alone.
What to look for in a bookkeeping service
- Monthly reconciliation, not quarterly or annual. Errors compound the longer they sit uncaught.
- A real profit-and-loss statement and balance sheet delivered to you, not just a login you have to check yourself.
- Flat pricing, not a per-transaction fee that climbs with a busy month.
- A clear scope: bookkeeping and tax preparation are different jobs. Know which one you are buying, since not every service does both.
- A person you can actually ask a question to, not a ticket queue.
The bottom line
If the business is simple and there is time to spend, DIY is a real option, not a lesser one. Once that 20-plus hours a month starts costing more than it saves, the honest comparison is software-only versus a person, and the real difference is whether the owner is still the one doing the work. Nova Solutions runs the person-does-it-for-you tier at a flat $179 a month: bookkeeping only, categorization and reconciliation and a monthly report, not tax filing or payroll.
Questions this post answers
- How much does a bookkeeper cost for a small business?
- It depends on who does the work. DIY with a spreadsheet is free but costs an owner more than 20 hours a month, per SCORE. Software-only tools like QuickBooks, Xero, or Zoho run $0 to $275 a month, but the owner still does the categorizing. A person who does it for you typically runs $300 or more a month, per NerdWallet, ranging from $250 for basic service to $1,000-plus for premium.
- What is the difference between bookkeeping and accounting?
- Bookkeeping is categorizing transactions, reconciling accounts, and producing monthly reports like a profit-and-loss statement and balance sheet. Accounting and tax preparation are separate work, often requiring a CPA, and typically use the bookkeeper's reports as their starting point rather than replacing them.
- Is DIY bookkeeping with a spreadsheet worth it?
- It can be, for a genuinely simple business with time to spare. The real cost is not the software, which is free or nearly free, it is the owner's own time: SCORE puts the average at more than 20 hours a month, and 60% of owners say they do not feel confident in their own accounting knowledge.
- How do I know if a bookkeeping quote is fair?
- Check whether reconciliation happens monthly, whether you receive actual reports rather than just software access, whether pricing is flat rather than scaling with transaction volume, and whether the scope is clearly bookkeeping rather than an unclear mix with tax prep. Typical full-service bookkeeping runs $300 or more a month per NerdWallet, so a quote far outside that range in either direction is worth a second look.
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