Bookkeeping services for small business

Ledgerbrook sells bookkeeping to small businesses, so read this as a guide from one of the options rather than a neutral survey. The prices for other services link to their own pages, read in September 2026.

What a bookkeeping service does every month

Strip away the plan names and every small business bookkeeping service sells the same core: a month that is closed. That means every transaction is in the right account, every account agrees with the bank, and you get reports you can trust. The work behind it looks like this:

Task	How often	What you get
Categorize bank and card transactions	Weekly or monthly	Every transaction posted to the right account, not “Uncategorized”
Reconcile bank and card accounts	Monthly	The books agree with each statement, with a report to prove it
Record payroll, loans and accruals	Monthly, where they apply	Wages, loan interest and owed expenses in the right month
Match deposits to invoices	Monthly	Customer payments applied, so receivables are real
Monthly financial statements	Monthly	Profit and loss and balance sheet, sometimes cash flow
Questions list	Monthly	One batch of “what was this charge?” instead of a stream of emails
Year-end handoff	Yearly	Reconciled books and a trial balance your tax preparer can work from

Reconciliation is the line that separates real bookkeeping from data entry. Categorizing a bank feed takes minutes with modern software. Proving that the books match the bank, account by account, is what catches duplicates, missing deposits and personal charges, and it is the step a cheap service is most likely to skip. Bank reconciliation explained shows what that check looks like.

What a bookkeeping service usually does not do

• File tax returns. That is a CPA or enrolled agent. Some services bundle it, most sell it separately or not at all.
• Run payroll. Bookkeepers record payroll. Paying people and filing payroll taxes is a payroll provider’s job, even when the same firm sells both.
• Pay your bills or send your invoices. Some full-service plans do this. Most expect you to approve and pay, and they record what happened.
• Give tax or legal advice. A good bookkeeper will flag what looks wrong. Deciding what to do about it sits with your accountant.

Knowing which of these you need decides the kind of service to look for, more than price does. A venture-funded startup adds a few items of its own, SAFEs and R&D credit records among them, covered in bookkeeping for startups.

Five ways a small business gets its books done

There is no single “bookkeeping service.” There are five ways to get the work done, and each one is priced in a different unit:

Option	Typical cost	Where the books live	Best when
Do it yourself, with software	The software subscription, plus your time	Your own QuickBooks Online or Xero	Few transactions, and you enjoy it
Freelance bookkeeper	$11 to $25 an hour on Upwork, more for US-based	Usually your own file	You can review the work and volume is steady
Employee	About $73,800 a year with benefits (median)	Your own file	Enough work to fill most of a week
Online bookkeeping service	Under $100 to $750 a month, published	Your own file, or the service’s platform	You want a fixed price and a closed month on a known date
Local CPA or accounting firm	Usually quoted, rarely published	Your own file	You want bookkeeping and tax under one roof and a local contact

The employee figure is the Bureau of Labor Statistics median of $50,670 a year (May 2025), grossed up for benefits and payroll costs. How much a bookkeeper costs shows the working for every row.

Most small businesses land on one of the middle three. Below about 50 transactions a month, doing it yourself is realistic if you reconcile every month. Above a few hundred a month with payables and payroll in the mix, an employee starts to make sense. Everything in between is where a bookkeeping service earns its fee.

What small business bookkeeping services cost

Online services publish flat monthly prices, and the entry points for plans where a person keeps the books run from under $100 to $750 a month. What moves the price is the same almost everywhere: the number of transactions, the number of bank and card accounts, and, for some services, your monthly expenses or revenue.

Service	Entry price	Books kept in
Ledgerbrook Get a free file review	$99 or $199 a month	Your own QuickBooks Online company
Bench Bookkeeping Light	$199 a month	Bench’s own platform
Merritt Bookkeeping	$250 a month	QuickBooks
Intuit Experts	From $300 a month, after a cleanup fee	QuickBooks Online
Xendoo Essential	$395 a month	QuickBooks Online or Xero
Bookkeeper360	From $399 a month	QuickBooks Online or Xero
inDinero Essential	From $750 a month	QuickBooks Online or NetSuite

The monthly fee is rarely the whole bill. If the books are behind, almost every service charges for catch-up separately, and that bill is often bigger than the first year of monthly fees. Ask for the catch-up price before you compare monthly ones. The full comparison, service by service, is in the best bookkeeping services for small business, and the cheapest plans and what they leave out are in affordable bookkeeping services.

Signs your business needs a bookkeeping service

Most owners hire help a year later than they should, usually when a tax deadline or a loan application forces it. These are the earlier signals:

1. The “Uncategorized” balance keeps growing. In QuickBooks Online, “Uncategorized Expense” or “Ask My Accountant” holding more than a few hundred dollars means the books are being skipped, not kept.
2. No account has been reconciled in the last three months. Without reconciliation, the profit figure is a guess.
3. Your tax preparer sends the books back. If the CPA bills you to fix the books before filing, you are paying for bookkeeping already, at a higher rate and in a rush.
4. A lender or investor asks for financial statements and you need a week to produce them.
5. Bookkeeping takes more than a few hours of your month. Price your own hour. At most owner rates, a flat monthly fee is cheaper.
6. You cannot answer “did we make money last month?” without logging into the bank.

If the books are already months behind, the first job is not monthly bookkeeping. It is catch-up or cleanup, and the difference between them decides what you pay for it.

How to choose a bookkeeping service

Price narrows the list. These six questions pick from it.

1. Who owns the books if you leave? A service that works inside your own QuickBooks Online or Xero company leaves the file with you. A service on its own platform keeps it in a system you would have to export from. In December 2024 Bench stopped operating with a few days’ notice and gave customers until March 2025 to download their data. Owners whose books sat in their own QuickBooks file did not need the download. Moving from one bookkeeper to another is covered step by step in how to switch bookkeepers.

2. Does a person reconcile the accounts, or only software? Ask who signs off a reconciliation, and ask to see a reconciliation report for one month. If nobody can show you one, nobody is doing it.

3. When is the month closed? “Monthly reports” means nothing without a date. Ask for the business day of the month your statements arrive, in writing.

4. What makes the price go up? Transactions, accounts, revenue, expenses and hours are all common triggers. Know which one you will hit first.

5. What access do they need? Bookkeeping needs accountant-level access to the books, not your bank password or the primary admin role on the company file. A service that asks for your online banking login is a red flag. The security questions to ask are the same ones a firm would ask of us.

6. Is it the same person each month? A rotating pool means re-explaining your business every few months. Ask who will work your file and whether that changes.

What to have ready before you hire one

A bookkeeper can start in days if these are in hand, and in weeks if they are not:

• Access to your accounting file as an accountant user, or a decision about which software to start in
• Bank and credit card statements for every account, back to the last month you know was correct
• Last year’s tax return, so opening balances tie to what was filed
• Loan statements and any vehicle or equipment financing
• Payroll reports from your payroll provider
• A list of anything unusual: owner money in or out, a second business through the same account, a large one-off purchase

The first month always takes longer than the rest. A good service will tell you what it found, in writing, before it quotes anything.

Common questions

How much should a small business pay for bookkeeping?

For an outsourced service, under $100 to $750 a month for a typical small business, scaled by transactions and accounts. A business with one bank account and a hundred transactions a month should be at the low end. Multi-entity, inventory or job-costing files sit at the top. Catch-up for months that were never done is priced on top.

Is a bookkeeper the same as an accountant?

No. A bookkeeper records and reconciles what happened. An accountant, usually a CPA, uses those records to prepare tax returns, plan taxes and advise. Most small businesses need both, and clean books make the accountant’s part cheaper. Bookkeeper vs CPA covers what only a CPA can do.

Can ChatGPT do my bookkeeping?

Not on its own. Software can categorize a bank feed, and AI tools such as ChatGPT are good at suggesting categories and explaining entries. Neither can confirm a transaction is personal, chase a missing receipt, or decide what a payment to a supplier was actually for. The categorizing gets faster every year. The judgment and the reconciliation sign-off still need a person.

What is the most common bookkeeping mistake small business owners make?

Running personal and business spending through the same account. Every mixed transaction has to be asked about, sorted and documented later, and it is the single biggest reason a catch-up takes longer than quoted. The second is skipping the monthly reconciliation, which lets a duplicate or a missing deposit sit unnoticed until tax time.

Do I need a local bookkeeper?

Rarely. The books live in cloud software, statements download, and receipts photograph. A local firm is worth it when you want tax and bookkeeping under one roof and prefer meeting in person.

Where Ledgerbrook fits

Ledgerbrook does monthly bookkeeping for small businesses on QuickBooks Online, inside your own company file. The price is $99 a month for up to 3 accounts, up to 200 transactions a month, and $199 past either limit, with every account reconciled and statements by the 5th business day. It is month to month, and one person works your file every month. Backlog is $99 per month behind.

It does not file tax returns, run payroll, or work in Xero or QuickBooks Desktop. If you need any of those under one bill, one of the services above is a better fit.

Bookkeeping for business owners explains how it works, and the pricing page lists every fee. Or send your file for a free review: a written answer within 48 hours on what it needs and what it costs, whether or not you hire us.