How much does outsourced bookkeeping cost?
Looking to outsource your bookkeeping? For most, the whole point of outsourcing bookkeeping is to avoid having someone on salary. If you didn’t have to pay a full time employee for your bookkeeping, why wouldn’t you do that? Especially if you think you don’t have the volume that would require that salaried position. That is the problem outsourcing solves.
The difference in dollars
A salaried bookkeeper will make anywhere from $30,000 to $80,000 a year in the Oklahoma City and Kansas City areas, usually averaging somewhere in the $40k range. And that is just the cost of their paycheck. This doesn’t include benefits like insurance costs or the square footage and equipment you need to have an employee present in your workspace. From what we have seen at Lionshare Bookkeeping, a salaried bookkeeper can cost around $4,000 per month.
How does that compare to an outsourced bookkeeper? A regular monthly bookkeeper generally costs about $300 per month. That is less than 1/10 the price.
The difference in experience
At this point, you have to ask if your outsourced bookkeeping is a general service or if they have niche experience like a specialty in real estate or whatever industry you’re in.
Niche experience is where the value should be measured!
We specialize in working with those that work with real estate. Our starting cost for a regular volume of business is about $500 a month. It will be a very different experience for a business owner who works with an industry professional compared to working with a general bookkeeper who has to be walked through the process. The latter might work out well and it might not.
The difference in volume
After considering general vs. niche, you need to understand volume. For a larger business that ends up really, truly needing someone working full time, outsourcing starts at a higher price. Quality and volume of work equal to a full time employee might cost a business owner $2,000 at Lionshare Bookkeeping. Since we already have real estate processes in place, our time spent working is greatly reduced while maintaining attention to detail. Reducing the amount of time spent on bookkeeping and the cost of bookkeeping while keeping high-end quality of work are huge benefits.
But what if you are not working with a high volume at all? If that is the case, you can see the value of niche work shine in different ways. We just signed a client who needed real estate bookkeeping and niche experience, but also had comparatively low volume of transactions. Their monthly bill including fees is still around the industry average at $280. Previously, they had been working with a general bookkeeper. That bookkeeper unfortunately didn’t understand the market as they had to spend much of their time remaining up-to-date on the best practices of many different markets.
Now those numbers are the highs and lows of outsourced bookkeeping. After a consultation, we would be able to figure out what level of service you require. Are you looking for high level advisory services or do you just need bare minimum debits and credits managed? Do you need in-depth monthly reporting or quarterly bookkeeping?