Most small business owners don’t struggle with what bookkeeping is. You struggle with a much sharper question:

“Should I hire a bookkeeper in-house, or outsource bookkeeping to a firm – and what does each option really cost?”

As an expert bookkeeper, I’ll walk you through:

  • What “in-house” and “outsourced” bookkeeping actually look like day to day
  • Real numbers on salaries, benefits, and outsourced fees in 2025
  • The less-obvious costs in your own time, risk, and flexibility
  • A simple way to decide which model fits your business right now

What In-House vs Outsourced Bookkeeping Really Means

When you strip away the buzzwords, you’re choosing between an employee and a specialist partner.

In-house bookkeeper
You add someone to your payroll whose primary job is recording transactions, reconciling accounts, managing receivables/payables, and supporting monthly close and reporting. They’re part of your internal team, with all the HR implications that come with that.

Outsourced bookkeeping
You hire a dedicated bookkeeping firm to handle those same tasks on a contract basis. You pay a monthly fee, they work remotely using your cloud accounting software, and you manage them like a vendor – not an employee.

The tasks can be similar. The cost structure, risk, and scalability are very different.

The Real Cost of an In-House Bookkeeper in 2025

Let’s start with what you’d actually pay to employ a bookkeeper.

Recent data in the United States shows:

  • Average base salary for a bookkeeper is around $43,000–$45,000 per year, or about $21 per hour, depending on experience and location.
  • Another 2025 snapshot puts typical hourly pay around $20.56 per hour, in the same ballpark.

That’s just base pay. Employers also carry:

  • Payroll taxes
  • Health insurance, retirement contributions, and paid time off (if offered)
  • Software licenses and equipment
  • Training time and management overhead

It’s common for benefits and on-top costs to add 20–30% to base salary for a full-time employee. Many small business cost guides estimate that a full-time bookkeeper often ends up in the $55,000–$85,000 per year range once all costs are included, depending on region and experience.

Here’s how that can look for a fairly typical scenario:

Cost Component Example Amount (Annual)
Base salary $45,000
Benefits & payroll taxes (≈25%) $11,250
Software, training, misc. $2,000
Estimated total $58,250 (~$4,850/mo)

You might pay more or less, but this is a realistic order of magnitude for a full-time in-house bookkeeper in 2025.

The Real Cost of Outsourced Bookkeeping

Outsourced bookkeeping is usually priced as a monthly subscription based on your transaction volume, complexity, and scope.

Recent pricing guides show:

  • Typical outsourced bookkeeping for small businesses runs roughly $250–$2,000 per month, depending on size and complexity.
  • Some breakdowns put basic small business packages starting around $300–$400/month, with more complex or multi-entity work reaching $2,500+/month.

For a normal small business – say, a service business with a few bank/credit accounts and steady volume – you’ll often see tiers like:

Business Type / Complexity Typical Outsourced Monthly Range
Very small, simple (few transactions) ~$300–$700
Moderate volume & complexity ~$700–$1,500
Multi-entity, inventory, advanced reporting ~$1,500–$2,500+

A firm like House of Bookkeepers would usually ask about:

  • Number of accounts and monthly transactions
  • Whether you need A/R, A/P, payroll coordination, or just core bookkeeping
  • Whether you need catch-up/cleanup work
  • Your current software stack

Then they price a package to match that workload instead of locking you into a full salary.

Don’t Forget the Cost of Your Time

Even if you don’t employ anyone yet, bookkeeping is still costing you in owner time.

Modern small-business guides suggest that:

  • Very small businesses may need 5–10 hours per month of bookkeeping work.
  • More complex small businesses can spend anything from a few hours per week up to several hours per month just keeping records current.

If you’re doing that yourself:

  • 10 hours/month × 12 = 120 hours per year
  • At an owner “hourly value” of $100 (which is conservative for many), that’s $12,000/year tied up in bookkeeping instead of sales, delivery, or leadership.

That opportunity cost alone can equal or exceed an entire year of outsourced bookkeeping for many small businesses.

Beyond Price: Risk, Control, and Flexibility

Once you understand the money, the decision is really about how you want your finance function to work.

Here’s a quick summary:

Factor Outsourced Bookkeeping In-House Bookkeeper
Cost predictability Fixed monthly fee, easier to budget Salary + benefits + raises + overhead
Total cost level Usually lower for small businesses Higher once fully loaded
Expertise Access to a team with varied experience Limited to one person’s skills
Scalability Scale up or down with your package Requires changing hours or hiring/firing
Key-person risk Spread across a team High – if they leave, books can stall
Tech & processes Standardized best practices across many clients You must design and enforce your own
Physical presence Mostly remote (cloud, shared docs) On-site or fully dedicated to your company
Management burden Vendor relationship (review, feedback, renewals) Recruiting, training, supervising, replacing

Both models can work. The key is matching the model to your stage and complexity.

When Outsourced Bookkeeping Usually Wins

In practice, outsourcing tends to be the best fit when:

You’re under (roughly) $5–7M in revenue
You don’t have enough ongoing work to justify a full-time bookkeeper – but you definitely have enough complexity that “DIY in Excel” doesn’t cut it anymore.

Your books need to be clean, timely, and tax-ready
You care about accurate monthly financials, bank reconciliations, and being prepared for your tax preparer or lender, but you don’t want to build a finance department.

You’re comfortable in the cloud
You already use (or are willing to use) tools like QuickBooks Online, Xero, or similar. Uploading documents, approving payments, and reviewing reports digitally fits how you work.

You’d rather buy a system than build one
You don’t want to create workflows, checklists, and controls from scratch. You’d rather lean on a firm that already has them.

This is where House of Bookkeepers is designed to plug in: as a globally available, specialized bookkeeping team that gives you clean, current books without you having to hire, train, and manage another employee.

When an In-House Bookkeeper Makes Sense

There are times when bringing someone inside the business beats outsourcing:

  • You’re big and complex enough that a bookkeeper would be busy full-time with meaningful work.
  • Your operations are cash-heavy or paper-heavy (restaurants with daily cash counts, retail with lots of physical invoices, etc.) and you truly need daily on-site handling.
  • You already have a controller or CFO who can supervise and mentor the bookkeeper, set policies, and catch errors early.
  • You’re intentionally building out an internal finance team – AP, AR, payroll, analyst  and bookkeeping is just one seat among many.

In those situations, the added cost of an employee is justified by how tightly you need finance integrated into day-to-day operations.

Simple Decision Framework (Use This Today)

If we simplify everything into a few core questions:

  1. If your current bookkeeping disappeared for 60 days, would your company be in real trouble – or mild discomfort?

    • If it’s mild discomfort: outsourcing is probably sufficient.
    • If it’s existential: you may need more in-house capacity plus external backup.
  2. Can you comfortably afford $55k–$70k per year for a bookkeeper, every year, without straining cash flow?

    • If no: outsourcing is the safer, more flexible option.
    • If yes: in-house might be viable – but still compared to outsourced numbers.
  3. Do you actually want the responsibility of managing a finance employee?

    • If not: pay for a done-for-you system.
    • If yes, and you have the time and skill: an internal hire can work well.

Where House of Bookkeepers Fits In

If you’re leaning toward outsourcing, a firm like House of Bookkeepers can effectively become your remote bookkeeping department:

  • They plug into your existing software or help you move to a better setup.
  • They handle day-to-day bookkeeping, reconciliations, and monthly reporting.
  • They keep your books ready for tax filing, lenders, or investors – wherever you are in the world.

The key advantage is that you get the discipline and consistency of a professional finance function without committing to full-time payroll costs.

Final Thoughts

For most small business owners, the math is straightforward:

  • A full-time, in-house bookkeeper often costs in the range of tens of thousands more per year than a well-structured outsourced service.
  • Your own time doing books is another four- or five-figure hidden cost.

Outsourced bookkeeping lets you buy back that time, reduce key-person risk, and get stronger processes at a predictable monthly price. In-house bookkeeping becomes attractive when your business is large and complex enough to keep a full-timer busy and you’re ready to truly build a finance team.