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How Much Does a Bookkeeper Cost per Month?

November 14, 2026

Alignment Capital founding rates start at $149 a month. Compare them with the BLS median bookkeeper wage of $50,670 and estimated employer cost.

In brief

Alignment Capital's founding-client monthly rates start at $149 and rise by annual revenue, up to $799 for companies between $5 million and $10 million. Those rates are locked for 12 months. A full-time in-house bookkeeping clerk is a different cost. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a May 2025 median wage of $50,670 a year, or $24.36 an hour, for bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks. Employer-paid benefits add to that wage.

This article is general information, not tax advice.

What Alignment Capital charges

Monthly bookkeeping and reconciliation is priced by trailing annual revenue. Founding-client rates, locked for 12 months:

Annual revenue	Monthly fee	Annual fee
Under $100,000	$149	$1,788
$100,000–$500,000	$199	$2,388
$500,000–$1,000,000	$349	$4,188
$1,000,000–$2,500,000	$449	$5,388
$2,500,000–$5,000,000	$599	$7,188
$5,000,000–$10,000,000	$799	$9,588

The monthly fee covers ongoing bookkeeping and reconciliation. Clients connect their bank and QuickBooks on a read-only basis.

It does not include tax return preparation. Tax filing goes through a licensed partner when you want that service.

Two other fees are separate:

Catch-up or cleanup work: $250 per month behind. See catch-up bookkeeping cost.
IRS or state notice help: $500 to $1,000, depending on the notice. Help with records is not a promise that a penalty will be removed.

The full table is on the pricing page.

What the monthly fee covers

Each month, the work is to record transactions, reconcile bank and credit card accounts to statements, and close the period. The goal is a set of books that tie to source records and can be given to a tax preparer.

Revenue for pricing is the company's trailing annual revenue at intake. If revenue moves into a different band later, the rate can be reviewed at renewal. The 12-month founding lock applies to the rate in effect when you start.

Multi-entity groups are priced per set of books. Two operating companies, each with its own bank accounts and tax return, are two monthly fees.

What an in-house bookkeeper costs, from BLS data

If you hire a bookkeeper as an employee, start with the wage data, not with a guessed monthly rate.

The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook reports these May 2025 figures for bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks:

Median annual wage: $50,670
Median hourly wage: $24.36
Lowest 10 percent earned less than $36,000
Highest 10 percent earned more than $74,550

The median is the midpoint. Half of workers in the occupation earned more, and half earned less. Wages vary by area and by experience.

Wages are not the employer's full cost. The BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation survey for June 2026 shows that, for private-industry office and administrative support occupations, wages and salaries were 68.7% of total compensation and benefits were 31.3%.

BLS does not publish a total-compensation figure just for bookkeeping clerks. You can apply that occupational-group ratio as an illustration:

$50,670 ÷ 0.687 ≈ $73,750 in total compensation.

Implied benefits in that illustration are about $23,080. Actual benefits vary by employer. The figure also leaves out recruiting, software, equipment, and paid coverage when the employee is out.

If the company hires an accountant to keep the books, the wage benchmark is higher. The BLS reports a May 2025 median annual wage of $83,680 for accountants and auditors.

A part-time hire can be estimated from the median hourly wage. At $24.36 an hour, 10 hours a week for 52 weeks is about $12,670 in wages, before benefits. Use the employee's actual rate when you have it. The median is only a public benchmark.

How to compare an outsourced fee with an in-house wage

Compare the same scope.

An in-house wage buys an employee's time, including work that may go beyond monthly bookkeeping. The Alignment Capital fee buys monthly bookkeeping and reconciliation for one set of books in the stated revenue band.

A fair comparison starts with what you pay now for the same work, then subtracts the monthly fee for your revenue band. The savings calculator does that arithmetic. It does not invent an average savings figure, and it does not treat the BLS median as your actual payroll cost.

If you already have an employee who only spends part of the week on the books, use that person's actual pay for the bookkeeping hours, not the full-time median.

What is not a fair comparison

Do not compare a monthly bookkeeping fee with a tax-preparation fee. They are different services.

Do not compare a monthly fee with a prior bookkeeper's hourly invoices unless the work product was the same: closed, reconciled months, on time.

Do not use an unsourced "typical bookkeeping rate" from a marketing page as a benchmark. If a number is not from the BLS, from a government source, or from a stated price list, treat it as unverified.

After the monthly fee

If the books are already behind, catch-up work is quoted first at $250 per month behind. Use the cleanup quote (coming soon) to count the months.

Once the books are current, the monthly rate keeps them current. To begin, get started.

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