I do not offer full-service payroll as a bookkeeper, and I don’t do payroll in QuickBooks, but my clients have a payroll service they use. I work a maximum of 10 hours per month on this particular client’s books, and charge $500 a month, which still comes out to be roughly $50 an hour. Working a maximum of five hours per month on this particular client’s books, and charging $250 a month, I’m making right around $50 an hour, which is in the ballpark of where I want to be. So, don’t be afraid to boast about your experience while marketing your accounting firm. And, use it as a competitive advantage when it comes to pricing your offerings. At some point or another, you may have clients of all sizes—aka small, medium, and large clients.
This means that you’re not taking into account the uniqueness of each situation and what a customer is actually willing to pay. After you understand your client’s needs, you’ll need to define your scope of work before you set your prices. Developing good discovery call questions is key in this step. Spend some time researching these kinds of questions to properly establish your client’s needs in order to outline the additional services that are required. Business Success Solution aims to empower accounting professionals to take charge of their business and double revenues while working half the time. Reanna initially worked with any client who was willing to pay her fees.
Investing in your business is essential to its success and growth. Some of the best investments you can make as a business owner are those which allow you to focus on the core of your business while outsourcing tasks that aren’t your specialty. The American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers (AIPB) certification program is ideal for someone who doesn’t have any formal education in bookkeeping. Certification exam and materials are $610 for nonmembers and $515 for AIPB members.
But, you certainly don’t want to overprice your offerings. Otherwise, you could wind up losing clients to other firms (and no bookkeeper wants that). For clients with more than $1 million in revenue, it would be good to look at how much they would pay a full-time bookkeeper, sitting in their office, working 40 hours a week. Online bookkeeping services might be the exact solution you need to save both time and money.
You are usually paying for QuickBooks, your education, and insurance. If they have an office worker designated to some of those other tasks, not all of the 1-3% would be distributed directly to you. I often mention that, starting out as a bookkeeper, you can charge $40 per hour to your clients. Then, as you gain experience and niche down, you can charge up to $80 or sometimes more per hour.
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. 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. This is the benefit to charging based on a percentage of your client’s revenue. Yes in the same way firm of accountants recommend us to their clients , we reciprocate and recommend clients to them..
The more certifications a provider has, the more qualified they are expected to be at what they do. As such, a provider with two certificates will charge a higher rate than one with just a single certificate. The bookkeeper’s exact services will also impact the cost, along with how experienced the bookkeeper is and their reputation. Danielle Bauter is a writer for the Accounting division of Fit Small Business. She has owned Check Yourself, a bookkeeping and payroll service that specializes in small business, for over twenty years. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from UCLA and has served on the Board of the National Association of Women Business Owners.
Add footnotes to the bundles to mention limits and overage rates. There are two additional benefits if this method will work in your situation. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. Let’s be honest, tending to the books isn’t everyone’s idea of a spring picnic.
While this isn’t a new concept, the term value pricing has been more popular lately with bookkeeping and accounting professionals. Keeper is the top-rated all-in-one business expense tracker, tax filing service, and personal accountant. There’s less of a clear-cut answer when it comes to the cost of outsourcing a bookkeeper. That’s because you might not employ their services full-time. However, as your business grows, you’ll find that your time becomes much more valuable and a scarce resource. Hiring a bookkeeper can help ensure your records are accurate, your books are balanced, and your invoices are paid on time without you having to do the work yourself.
In order to help with this, Step 1 becomes incredibly important. In the conversation with your client, you’ll have to uncover and establish value with well-crafted questions. Just Google something like “value pricing questions” to see what kind of interview questions help. Value pricing takes a bit of a different approach compared to fixed pricing. Offering something that is not completely aligned with your client’s business needs is a surefire way of getting your proposal denied.
If you’re still on the fence about hiring a bookkeeper, here are a few extra considerations to keep in mind. You also have to think about the size of your business, not to mention its structure and complexity. At the end of the day, different companies have different needs. Ultimately, these are all different ways bookkeepers help drive profitability and growth. We will go over the cost of all your bookkeeping options — and help you determine which one right for you.
When you decide to switch away from your average hourly rates to a flat monthly fee, your instinct is to still base it on your time. You discover that it takes around incidental expenses definition 40 hours per month to complete your monthly bookkeeping tasks. Then you multiply 40 by your old hourly rate of $40, and you decide to charge a flat $1,600/month.