For most startups, outsourced accounting costs between $500 and $2,500 per month for bookkeeping alone. Add payroll, invoicing, and bill payment and the all-in finance operation typically lands between $1,500 and $5,000 or more. Where you sit inside those ranges comes down to three drivers: your monthly transaction volume, the number of accounts that must be tracked and reconciled, and the complexity of your settlement flows.
I scope and price these engagements every month, and the ranges only tell half the story. Recently I scoped two startups in the same month: similar revenue, both running on Stripe. One priced near the bottom of that range. The other came in at roughly three times as much, because behind the same revenue number sat two entities, nine accounts to reconcile, and a crypto wallet the founder had forgotten to mention until the second call. That gap is what this guide explains: the real ranges, what moves you up or down inside them, and the questions that expose the difference between two quotes that look identical on a proposal.
What does "outsourced accounting" actually include?
Most pricing confusion starts here, because providers use the same words for different scopes. Bookkeeping means recording and categorizing transactions, reconciling every account, posting accrual adjustments, and producing monthly financial statements: a P&L, a balance sheet, and cash flow. Full-service accounting layers operations on top: payroll processing and reconciliation, accounts receivable and payable, sales tax tracking and filings, and a management reporting pack with commentary.
Our own published pricing follows that structure: CPA-reviewed bookkeeping from $1,200 per month (accrual books, reconciliations, and a monthly review call), managed payroll from $500 per month, and invoicing and bill payment from $3,000 per month. When a competitor quotes you $700 for "accounting," the first question is which of those three jobs they mean. Usually it is only the first one, on a cash basis, with no review layer.
What actually drives the price
Three variables explain most of the spread between a $500 engagement and a $2,500 one:
- Transaction volume per month. Eighty transactions and eight hundred are different jobs. Volume drives categorization time, exception handling, and how much can go wrong between closes.
- Number of accounts to track and reconcile. Every bank account, credit card, payment processor, centralized exchange account, and crypto wallet is a separate reconciliation that has to tie out every month. Two entities with four accounts each is eight reconciliations, not two.
- Complexity of the settlement flows. A single Stripe-to-bank flow reconciles quickly. Reconciling on-ramp volume through a PSP to banking settlement, across currencies, with fees netted at three different points, is where the hours actually go.
My two startups from the intro split exactly on these drivers. Same revenue, but one entity with four accounts against two entities with nine accounts and a wallet: the price tripled before anyone looked at the income statement. Revenue, on its own, is a weak predictor. I have seen $5M businesses with simpler books than pre-revenue startups running three payment rails.
How much does bookkeeping cost at each stage?
- Pre-revenue or very early: $500 to $1,000 per month. One bank account, one card, low volume, books that need to be right for your first diligence rather than elaborate.
- Operating startup: $1,000 to $2,500 per month. Multiple accounts, payroll running, sales tax obligations, investors expecting monthly statements.
- Full finance operation: $1,500 to $5,000 or more per month once payroll, AR/AP, and management reporting investors actually read are in scope.
DIY software runs $30 to $100 per month and is the right answer for some founders at the start. The catch is not the subscription price; it is the ten hours a month of founder time, and the fact that self-maintained books reliably break down right when volume grows, which is exactly when investors start asking for them.
Which pricing model should you expect?
You will be quoted one of three ways: a fixed monthly fee, hourly billing, or per-transaction pricing. My position is that a fixed monthly fee scoped on volume bands is the only model that aligns incentives, and it comes from watching the alternative fail. Founders on hourly billing sit on questions because each one feels like a $200 email; by the time the question finally surfaces, it has grown into a cleanup project. A fixed fee means you should never hesitate to forward the email. Per-transaction pricing looks scientific until a high-volume, low-value integration triples your bill without adding any accounting complexity.
A fair fixed-fee provider will ask about the three drivers above before quoting, and will re-scope openly when your volume changes rather than quietly eating margin or padding hours. If a quote arrives before anyone has asked how many accounts you have, the number is either padded or about to grow.
Is outsourcing cheaper than hiring in-house?
For a startup, almost always. The median bookkeeper wage in Canada is $28.02 per hour, which is about $58,000 per year full time before employer payroll taxes, benefits, software, training, and vacation coverage. Most startups do not have forty hours a week of bookkeeping until well past Series A; you would be paying a full-time salary for a part-time workload.
The subtler problem is the review layer. A solo in-house bookkeeper has nobody checking their work, and errors compound quietly until a diligence process finds them. I see this from both sides: as a fractional CFO, part of my job is reviewing books that other providers produced, and the errors that surface in diligence are almost never in the categorization. They are in the accounts nobody reconciled. An outsourced team gives you fractional slices of both roles: the person doing the books and the CPA reviewing them. That review is what makes the difference between books that exist and books an investor will accept.
What changes when you hold crypto?
Crypto activity moves every driver at once. Each wallet and exchange account is another reconciliation. On-chain activity can add thousands of small transactions a month. Cost basis has to be tracked per asset, and a dedicated crypto subledger has to sit on top of Xero or QuickBooks so on-chain data flows into the same monthly financials instead of living in a spreadsheet nobody trusts. The second startup from my intro is the typical case: one forgotten wallet turned a straightforward bookkeeping quote into a subledger implementation with per-asset cost basis tracking.
Expect the top of the bookkeeping range, or above it, and treat that as the honest price of the work rather than a premium. A provider who quotes a crypto-holding startup at generic rates has not understood the engagement yet, and you will pay for that discovery later in cleanup fees. This is specialized enough that we run it as its own service line: crypto bookkeeping, with wallet accounting included.
What the monthly fee does not include
Being clear about boundaries saves everyone an awkward invoice later. A monthly bookkeeping fee generally does not include:
- Catch-up and cleanup. If your books are months behind, rebuilding them is a separate onboarding project, typically two to four weeks depending on volume and entity count, priced on its own.
- Corporate tax returns. Your T2 in Canada or Form 1120 in the US is annual tax work, usually quoted per filing.
- Subledger and software licenses. Accounting software and crypto subledger subscriptions are usually billed at cost, on top of the service fee.
- CFO-level work. Forecasting, board reporting, and fundraising support are a different engagement with different pricing. A $1,500 bookkeeping fee does not buy you a CFO, whatever the proposal says.
How to compare quotes that look identical
Two $1,500 proposals can describe completely different services. Here is a composite of two proposals I have seen more than once, both quoting the same monthly fee:
| What you are buying | Quote A, $1,500/mo | Quote B, $1,500/mo |
|---|---|---|
| Basis | Cash | Accrual |
| Who does and reviews the books | Bookkeeper, no named reviewer | Bookkeeper plus CPA review |
| Accounts included | "Reasonable use," undefined | Listed and capped: six accounts, one wallet |
| Monthly close | "Monthly," no delivery date | Day 10, statements plus review call |
| When volume doubles | Silent re-pricing later | Volume bands in writing |
Same number, very different services. Before signing either, get written answers to these:
- Who does the books, and who reviews them? Is the reviewer a CPA?
- What day of the month does the close land, and what do I receive?
- Accrual or cash basis? If accrual costs extra, how much?
- How many accounts, wallets, and payment rails does this price include?
- What happens to the fee when my volume doubles?
- Is a monthly review call included, or billed?
Take this list into any evaluation call, including one with us, and ask the provider to mark up what is included. The ones worth hiring will answer in writing without flinching.
The bottom line
Budget $500 to $2,500 per month for startup bookkeeping, more once payroll and AR/AP join the scope, and expect the top of the range if you hold crypto or run multiple payment rails. Of my two startups from the intro, the cheaper engagement is not the better-run company; it is just the simpler one. Volume, account count, and settlement complexity set the price; everything else is packaging. Rules and thresholds also vary by jurisdiction and by your facts, so treat the ranges here as a map rather than a quote.
If you want a number for your actual situation, we will scope it against your real account list and transaction volume. See what our monthly accounting includes, or book a call and bring your messiest month; that is the one that sets the price anyway.