Outsourced bookkeeping that ends the same way every month: closed by the 10th

Start from what is currently going wrong rather than from a menu. If you cannot say what last month made, you need monthly bookkeeping. If the last clean month was some time in the past, you need a catch-up first and monthly bookkeeping after it. If payroll runs but never lands correctly in the profit and loss, you need payroll plus the journals. If money is collected late or bills get paid twice, you need AP and AR. If the numbers are accurate but nobody explains them, you need management reporting. If your tax accountant bills hours to rebuild records every year, you need a year-end pack.

Most small businesses buy two or three of these, not six. On the free books review we look at your actual file and tell you which ones move the needle and which ones you can skip for now. We would rather scope a smaller engagement that works than a bigger one that stalls.

Yes, and most clients do. The usual path is monthly bookkeeping first, because everything else depends on the ledger being right. Payroll journals, AP and AR ageing, management commentary and the year-end pack are all built on top of a reconciled file, so adding them before the base is clean produces confident-looking reports built on bad data.

Once one or two closes have run cleanly, adding a service is a scope change rather than a new onboarding: the access, the chart of accounts and the document flow already exist. We reprice in writing before anything changes, and there is no penalty for adding or dropping a service. On a fixed monthly plan, adding a service usually moves you up a tier instead of creating a second invoice. On hourly or a dedicated resource, it simply changes what those hours are spent on.

We do not. Every quote follows a look at the actual file, because the two things that drive the work are transaction volume and how much of the history is wrong, and neither is visible from a conversation.

On the free books review we ask for read-only access or a screen share and check a short list: how many bank, card and payment accounts exist, when each was last reconciled to a statement, what is sitting in suspense or uncategorised, whether the balance sheet holds balances nobody can explain, and whether payroll and sales platforms post correctly. That takes about twenty minutes.

You then get a one-page proposal with the monthly fee, the catch-up fee if there is a backlog, what is in scope, what is not, and the date your first close lands. If the file is in better shape than you feared, the quote says so.

The bookkeeper does the work and the accountant decides whether the work is right. A bookkeeper categorises transactions, reconciles accounts to statements, chases documents, enters bills, raises invoices and prepares the month for closing.

An ACCA-qualified accountant reviews that close before it leaves the firm: whether the balance sheet is supported by schedules, whether accruals and prepayments have been treated consistently, whether a margin movement is real or a coding error, and whether anything in the numbers needs flagging to you.

In practical terms this is why an error gets caught in month one rather than at year-end, when it is eleven months more expensive to fix. It is also why a bookkeeper is priced at $14 an hour here and an ACCA accountant at $28. In the second case you are paying for judgement, not keystrokes. The mistakes that cost the most are almost never data-entry errors.

Only if the opening balances cannot be trusted, which is the case more often than owners expect. Monthly bookkeeping starts from a known position: the prior month closed, reconciled and supported. If the last reconciled month was eight months ago, starting monthly work now produces a current month that balances on top of an unreliable base, and the problem just moves down the page.

So we check first. If the gap is a few weeks of unreconciled feeds, it gets folded into the first close at no extra cost. If it is months or years, or the history carries miscoded entries and a growing suspense account, we quote a separate fixed-fee catch-up, run it month by month, and move you onto the normal monthly rhythm once the file is current.

The catch-up is always priced as a one-off so you can see exactly what the backlog costs, separately from your ongoing fee. Our guide to catching up 12 months sets out the order we work in.

They work alongside them, deliberately. We do not file tax returns and we do not audit. What we produce is the input your tax professional needs: a closed ledger, reconciled control accounts, supporting schedules for the balance sheet, fixed asset and depreciation workings, and a year-end pack they can file from without rebuilding anything.

Most tax accountants are glad to receive it, because a large share of what they bill at year-end is reconstruction work rather than tax work. We are happy to speak to yours during onboarding to agree the chart of accounts, the treatment of anything unusual, and the format they want the year-end pack in.

If you do not have a tax professional yet, we will tell you what to look for in your jurisdiction. We will not pretend we can do the filing ourselves.

Fixed monthly suits work that looks the same every month: a steady transaction volume, a settled chart of accounts and a predictable close. You get a known number, we absorb the variance, and neither side watches a clock. Monthly bookkeeping, payroll and reporting usually fit this model well.

Hourly or a dedicated resource suits work that varies, work with an end date, or work that has to happen inside your systems on your schedule. Catch-up projects, seasonal spikes, AP and AR during a cash crunch, and businesses that want a named person on set hours all fit better hourly. Rates are $14 an hour for a bookkeeper, $20 for a senior bookkeeper and $28 for an ACCA accountant, with full-time equivalents of $1,650, $2,400 and $3,600 a month.

We will tell you which is cheaper for your situation even when it is the smaller number. The full pricing page sets both models out side by side.

Tax return preparation and filing, in any country. Statutory payroll filing, which stays with your local agent or bureau. Statutory audit or assurance work. Company formation and registered agent services. Personal financial or investment advice. Signing anything on your behalf, or moving money out of your accounts: we prepare and schedule payments, and you approve and release them.

We are also not a software vendor, so your QuickBooks Online or Xero subscription stays in your name and under your control.

Within bookkeeping itself, scope is written down in the proposal rather than left to assumption: the number of accounts, the transaction band, which entities are covered, and how many payroll employees are included. Anything outside that is quoted before it is done, never invoiced afterwards as a surprise. If a request falls outside what we do well, we say so and point you at someone who does it, which is cheaper for both of us than learning on your file.