Bookkeeping help is what an owner searches for at the point where the books have started costing evenings, and the question underneath it is do i need a bookkeeper for my small business or can this be fixed another way. The honest answer depends on hours: how many a month the books take, what those hours are worth against everything else you could do, and whether the work is behind. This page sets out the alternatives from cheapest to most complete, and the hiring sheet and scope sheet on this site put your own numbers on the decision.
Work out how many hours the books actually take
Count the transactions a month from your bank statements, the accounts you hold, the invoices you raise and the bills you pay, and put them into the scope sheet on this site. It returns the hours a competent bookkeeper spends on that scope. If the number is small and you are spending three times it, the problem is method rather than volume; if the number is large, the problem is volume and no method will fix it.
The alternatives, cheapest first
Better method: one business account, a bank feed into the ledger, receipts captured as they happen, a fixed hour each week. Part help: a bookkeeper who does the monthly reconciliation only, while you code during the month. An outsourced service: the whole scope, monthly, on a fee. An employee: only above the hours where the hiring sheet says an employee is cheaper than the quote. Most small businesses move down this list one step at a time, and the step is usually the reconciliation.
When the answer is yes, you need a bookkeeper
When the books are behind, because catch-up gets more expensive every month it waits. When your accountant is spending year-end hours fixing the books at the accountant's rate. When you cannot say what you are owed or what you owe without a morning's work. When the reconciliation has not been done for a quarter. Any one of those is the signal; two together is the decision made.
Costing the decision on your own figures
Put the hours from the scope sheet into the hiring sheet with the quote you have been given and the value of your own hour. The sheet shows what the books cost you now, what the quote costs, and what an employee would cost with on-costs, and it prints the hours a month at which each option wins. The decision then rests on numbers you typed, not on a rule of thumb from someone selling the service.
Questions people ask about bookkeeping help
Do I need a bookkeeper if I use accounting software?
The software does not reconcile itself. If somebody reconciles it to the bank every month, you may not; if nobody does, the software is a tidy record of what you typed and nothing more.
How small is too small to need a bookkeeper?
There is no revenue threshold. A business with fifty transactions a month and one account can keep its own books in an hour; one with the same revenue across six accounts and a card processor cannot. Count the scope, not the sales.
Can I get bookkeeping help for a one-off problem?
Yes. Many bookkeepers will do a reconciliation, a clean-up or a set-up as a fixed job without a monthly engagement. Ask for it as a one-off and price it by the hour.
Is a bookkeeper the same as bookkeeping help from my accountant?
Often the accountant's practice has a bookkeeping team, and that is fine if it is priced as bookkeeping. If the accountant is doing the monthly work personally at the accountant's rate, it is the most expensive bookkeeping help there is.