The honest ranges
Monthly bookkeeping in the US lands in fairly predictable bands once you control for transaction volume. These are full-service ranges — categorization, reconciliation, and a monthly close producing statements you can hand to a lender.
- Under 100 transactions/month, one bank account: $300–$600
- 100–300 transactions, two or three accounts: $600–$1,200
- 300–800 transactions, multiple accounts plus payroll: $1,200–$2,500
- 800–2,000 transactions, inventory or multi-entity: $2,500–$5,000
- 2,000+ transactions or 3+ entities: $5,000+, usually priced as a controller engagement
What actually drives the number
Revenue is a poor predictor of bookkeeping cost. A $10M consultancy issuing 40 invoices a month is cheaper to keep books for than a $2M ecommerce brand processing 3,000 orders across four channels. The real drivers are mechanical.
- Transaction count. The single biggest factor. Every line has to be coded and reconciled.
- Account and entity count. Each bank, card, and legal entity is a separate reconciliation.
- Payment channel sprawl. Stripe, PayPal, Shopify, and Amazon each settle differently and each needs its own clearing logic.
- Inventory. COGS tracking turns bookkeeping into cost accounting and reliably adds 30–50%.
- Payroll complexity. Multi-state payroll means multi-state tax registrations and filings.
- Close deadline. A 5-day close costs more than a 20-day close because it compresses the work into a fixed window.
Reading a suspiciously low quote
A $200/month quote for a business doing 500 transactions is not a bargain — it is a scope difference that has not been disclosed yet. Ask what is excluded.
- Is the monthly close included, or is that billed separately at year-end?
- Who reconciles the balance sheet, and how often — monthly or annually?
- Are 1099s, sales tax filings, and payroll tax returns in scope?
- What is the turnaround when I ask a question — same week, or next close?
- Does the fee change if my transaction volume grows 40%?
The pattern to watch for
Cheap monthly bookkeeping that only categorizes transactions and never reconciles the balance sheet produces books that look fine all year and fall apart at tax time. The cleanup is usually billed at a premium by whoever inherits it.
When bookkeeping stops being the right purchase
Bookkeeping records what happened. Once you are making decisions that depend on what the numbers mean — pricing, hiring pace, whether a product line is actually profitable — you have moved past what a bookkeeper is scoped to give you.
The tell is the questions you find yourself asking. "Did this transaction get coded correctly" is a bookkeeping question. "Is this customer segment margin-positive after support cost" is a controller or CFO question, and no amount of bookkeeping hours will answer it.