Bookkeeping pricing guide
How Much Does Bookkeeping Cost for a Service Business?
The useful answer is not the cheapest advertised number. It is the price for a clearly defined monthly close that matches the accounts, activity, reporting, and current condition of your books.
Fire & Forge's current ranges
Monthly bookkeeping generally starts in one of two ranges, with cleanup scoped separately.
Essential
$300-$500/month
Often a fit for companies under about $1M with straightforward monthly books.
Professional
$500-$850/month
For more activity, accounts, crews, job volume, A/R, A/P, or reporting complexity.
Cleanup
Scoped fixed fee
For prior months or years that must be reconciled, corrected, or rebuilt first.
These are Fire & Forge's public service ranges, not a claim about every bookkeeping provider or a guaranteed quote before the file is reviewed.
What changes the price
Revenue matters less than the work hiding underneath it.
Revenue can be a useful shorthand for complexity, but two businesses at the same revenue may require very different bookkeeping scopes.
Transaction and account volume
More bank accounts, cards, loans, deposits, transfers, and monthly transactions create more reconciliation and review work.
A/R, A/P, and payroll activity
Open customer invoices, vendor bills, payroll entries, reimbursements, and loan payments add coordination and balance-sheet work.
Job and service-system complexity
Payments and invoices may need to tie between QuickBooks, Jobber or another field-service system, merchant processors, and bank deposits.
Condition of the existing books
Unreconciled months, duplicate accounts, uncategorized transactions, incorrect balances, and missing statements usually require cleanup before recurring work settles into a rhythm.
Reporting and communication
A basic financial-statement package is different from department, job, class, location, or management reporting with regular owner notes.
Document readiness
Consistent access to statements, receipts, loan documents, payroll reports, and owner answers keeps the close efficient. Missing information creates follow-up work.
Compare the scope
Ask these questions before comparing monthly fees.
A lower price can be perfectly appropriate for a smaller scope. The problem is comparing two numbers without knowing whether they promise the same work.
- 1Which bank, credit card, loan, and payment accounts are included?
- 2How frequently will every included account be reconciled?
- 3Are A/R, A/P, payroll, and merchant-processor entries included or excluded?
- 4What financial statements and owner notes arrive each month?
- 5What is the target close date, and what information must the owner provide?
- 6How are questions, corrections, and uncategorized transactions handled?
- 7Is tax preparation included, coordinated, or explicitly separate?
- 8Is historical cleanup included in the monthly fee or quoted separately?
Monthly bookkeeping
Maintain a repeatable close.
Current transactions are categorized, accounts are reconciled, questions are resolved, and financial statements are delivered on a regular schedule.
Cleanup and catch-up
Repair the starting point.
Historical periods are investigated, missing statements are located, balances are corrected, and old transactions are reconciled so monthly work can begin from numbers that tie out.
Separating the cleanup quote protects both sides: the owner sees the one-time repair scope, and the recurring monthly price reflects the steady-state work after the file is usable.
Illustrative comparison
Similar revenue does not always mean similar bookkeeping.
These are examples for explaining scope, not claims about particular clients.
Business A: simpler monthly books
A $700,000 landscaping company has one operating account, one credit card, outside payroll, current books, and limited A/R and A/P. The owner provides statements quickly and needs the standard monthly financial statements.
Likely conversation: Essential range.
Business B: more moving parts
A $1.4 million HVAC company has multiple cards and loans, payroll entries, customer receivables, vendor bills, merchant deposits, Jobber activity, and six unreconciled prior months.
Likely conversation: cleanup plus the Professional range.
Why the work matters
Clean records support more than tax season.
The IRS explains that good records help a business monitor progress, prepare financial statements, identify income sources, track expenses, prepare returns, and support reported items. That does not determine what a bookkeeping provider should charge, but it explains why reliable recordkeeping has real operating and compliance value.
Common questions
Bookkeeping cost FAQ
Get a scoped answer
Show us the file, accounts, and backlog. We will tell you what the books need.
Fire & Forge provides remote bookkeeping to service businesses nationwide.