How to price bookkeeping services: hourly, fixed fee, and value pricing

Most bookkeepers set their first price by asking what other bookkeepers charge, and then spend years undoing it. A price copied from someone else has their costs, their clients, and their speed built into it, not yours. This guide builds a price from the other direction: what you need each hour to earn, how many hours a client’s work will take, and how to package and protect the result. It then covers collecting the fee and raising it. Survey figures are given with their sample and date and are linked in the Sources section.

Three pricing models

The second and third rows are why the profession has moved. Under hourly billing, every improvement you make to your own process cuts your income. Under a fixed fee, it raises your margin.

What the surveys show

Three published sources give a picture, each with limits you should keep in mind.

• Ignition, 2025 US benchmark. Among 219 US-based accounting firms, 10% or fewer charged hourly for the services benchmarked, apart from tax planning and advisory. Monthly bookkeeping and accounting most commonly ran US$250 to US$499 a month, a band reported by 29% of firms ^[1] . The sample is firms that use Ignition, a proposal and billing tool, so it is likely to lean towards fixed fees.
• CPA.com and AICPA, 2024. In a survey of 206 US client advisory practices, only 10% still used hourly billing as their primary pricing method ^[2] .
• Institute of Certified NZ Bookkeepers, 2023. Among 145 respondents, the most common hourly band for bookkeeping services was NZ$61 to NZ$70, as it had been in each of the three earlier surveys. For high-end, troubleshooting, or consulting work the most common band was NZ$101 to NZ$150 ^[3] .

None of these tells you what to charge. They tell you that fixed fees are now the norm for recurring work, and that a higher rate for difficult work is standard practice.

Step 1: find your cost floor

Your floor is the hourly yield below which you are subsidising the client.

Cost floor per hour = (income you need + overheads) ÷ client hours you can bill in a year

Overheads include software, insurance, professional body fees, training, equipment, and the tax and pension contributions an employer would otherwise pay. Client hours are what is left after admin, sales, training, and leave; the capacity guide shows how to measure them.

An illustration, with figures to replace with your own: you need 60,000 a year, overheads are 12,000, and you can bill 1,200 client hours. The floor is 72,000 ÷ 1,200 = 60 an hour. Every client must yield at least that. Your target rate should sit above it, because the floor covers costs and nothing else.

For comparison with employment, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports median pay for bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks of US$24.36 an hour for 2025 ^[4] . That is a wage, with the employer carrying overheads, unbilled time, and risk. A practice rate has to carry all three, which is why it is a multiple of the wage.

Step 2: measure the scope

A fee is only as good as the scope behind it. Before quoting, get the numbers that drive hours:

• Bank, card, and payment accounts, and monthly transactions on each.
• Supplier bills and sales invoices per month.
• Payroll: employees, pay frequency, and who runs it.
• Tax registrations and filing frequency.
• Reporting wanted: none, quarterly figures, or a monthly pack with a call.
• How documents will arrive, and how reliably.
• The state of the books today.

The client onboarding checklist covers how to collect these before you say yes.

Step 3: build the fee

Monthly fee = (estimated hours × target rate) + per-client software + risk margin

Estimate hours from clients of similar shape that you have tracked. Add the software you buy for that client. Add a margin for what you cannot see yet; new clients almost always take longer than they look. Then round to a clean figure.

Continuing the illustration: a client estimated at 5 hours a month, a target rate of 80, 30 of per-client software, and a 15% margin gives (5 × 80) + 30 = 430, plus 15% = 494.50. Quote 495.

Then state the limits the fee assumes, in the proposal itself: “up to 150 bank transactions and 40 bills a month, one quarterly return, documents received by the 3rd working day”. The limits are what let you reprice without an argument when the client grows.

Step 4: offer three packages

Three options turn “yes or no” into “which one”. Keep the differences real and easy to see. An illustrative structure:

Price each from the same formula. Most clients choose the middle, so build the middle package around the service you most want to deliver.

Step 5: protect the scope

Fixed fees fail when the scope drifts and the fee does not. Four clauses prevent most of it:

1. Volume limits, as in Step 3, with the next band’s price stated.
2. Backlog is separate. Anything before the start date is quoted as a project. See catch-up bookkeeping.
3. Extras are quoted before they are done. A one-line email with a price, approved by reply, is enough.
4. Late documents have a consequence. Items after the cut-off roll into the next period, and repeated lateness is chargeable. See how to stop chasing client receipts.

Step 6: collect in advance

Bill recurring fees monthly in advance by direct debit or card, so that the work is never ahead of the money. For projects, take a deposit. This is becoming normal: in Ignition’s 2025 benchmark, 31% of firms collected a deposit upfront, up from 26% a year earlier, and 13% collected the full fee upfront ^[1] .

Step 7: review every year

Set one date a year on which every fee is reviewed, and tell clients about it when they sign. Reprice for three reasons: your costs rose, the client’s volume grew past the limits, or the work turned out harder than quoted.

Increases are expected across the profession. In the same Ignition survey, 80% of firms said they would raise prices in 2026, by an average of 5% to 10% ^[1] . A short, plain notice works best:

From 1 April your monthly fee moves from 495 to 530. This reflects higher software and compliance costs and the growth in your transaction volume over the year. The scope of the service is unchanged.

Give at least a month’s notice, state the new figure, and do not apologise.

Moving hourly clients to a fixed fee

Use the time records you already have. Average the last six months of billed hours, multiply by your target rate, add the margin, and offer it as a fixed monthly fee with the scope written out. Most clients accept because the number stops moving. For the few whose hours swing wildly, find the cause first. It is usually document flow, and that can be fixed.

Mistakes that cost the most

• Pricing from a competitor’s website instead of your own costs.
• Quoting before seeing the books.
• A fixed fee with no stated limits.
• Folding a backlog into the monthly fee.
• Never raising prices, then raising them 30% at once.
• Keeping a client whose tracked hours have exceeded the fee for a year.

Where ExpenseFlow fits

Two places. On the cost side, ExpenseFlow bills per client file with unlimited staff seats, so its cost moves with the number of clients you bill, not the size of your team. That makes it a per-client line in the Step 3 formula. Current prices are on pricing for bookkeepers.

On the hours side, it takes over reading and coding bills and receipts: documents are captured, coded line by line with an account and tax treatment, and held for your review before they sync to Xero or QuickBooks Online. Under a fixed fee, any hours you no longer spend stay with you as margin. ExpenseFlow does not publish a figure for that saving. Track hours per client before and after, and reprice from your own data.