How Much Does an Accountant Cost for a Small Business?

A small business typically spends $3,000 to $15,000 a year on accounting, and where you land depends on three things: who does the work, how much of it there is, and whether you buy it monthly or once a year at tax time. At the low end, a software-based bookkeeping service at $200 to $300 a month plus a tax preparer for the returns comes to $3,000 to $5,000. In the middle, a CPA firm keeping the books monthly and filing both the business and personal returns runs $6,000 to $12,000. A full-time in-house bookkeeper costs more than either: the median wage alone is $50,670 a year per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, before payroll taxes and benefits.

What do the different kinds of accountants charge?

The title on the door predicts the price better than anything else. Bookkeepers bill about $66 an hour in the most recent Intuit survey and CPAs about $126. For a basic individual return, the 2025 NATP study found averages of about $185 for a preparer with no credential, $228 for an enrolled agent, and $280 for a CPA. The four do overlapping work, and what changes as the price rises is licensing, the right to represent you before the IRS, and the range of work they can sign.

Who	What they do	Published rate data
Bookkeeper	Records transactions, reconciles accounts, runs monthly reports	$66 an hour average billing rate (Intuit, 2021). Median employee wage $24.36 an hour (BLS, May 2025)
Non-credentialed tax preparer	Prepares returns. No IRS representation rights unless in the IRS Annual Filing Season Program	About $185 for a basic Form 1040 (NATP 2025)
Enrolled agent	Federally licensed for tax. Prepares returns and represents clients before the IRS	$228 for a basic Form 1040 (NATP 2025)
CPA	State-licensed. Tax, financial statements, advisory, audit, and IRS representation	$280 for a basic Form 1040 (NATP 2025). $126 an hour (Intuit, 2021). The NATP 2025 average for all tax professionals who bill hourly is $182

Sources: the NATP 2025 fee study as reported by Accounting Today, the Intuit rate survey from late 2021, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics pages for bookkeeping clerks and accountants. The Intuit figures are nearly five years old, so treat them as a floor.

How much does a small business accountant cost per month?

For bookkeeping, $200 to $1,000 a month covers most small businesses, and tax work is usually billed once a year on top of that. Software-driven services sit at the low end, a named bookkeeper costs $300 to $470, and a CPA firm that reviews every monthly close runs $350 to $1,000. The published prices as of September 2026 line up like this.

Provider	Monthly price	What it is
Pilot Essentials	$99	Software-driven, cash basis
Bench	$199 to $399, or $649 with tax filing	Software-first bookkeeping team
1-800Accountant	$209 to $469, billed annually	Tax advisory up to bookkeeping with a dedicated bookkeeper
QuickBooks Live	From $300, after a cleanup fee	Bookkeeper working in your QuickBooks file
Blue Cloud CPA	From $350, $650, or $1,000 by monthly expenses	Monthly close reviewed and signed off by a CPA

The spread mostly reflects how much human time is in the product. When you compare plans, check who works on the file, whether the books are cash or accrual, and whether anyone reviews the close. At our firm a CPA reviews each month’s close and the same firm files the return, so nothing gets rebuilt at year end.

Tax work is usually billed once a year on top of the monthly fee. For a business return plus the owner’s personal return, add about $1,200 at the national survey averages, or $2,190 at our published starting prices.

What does a small business spend on accounting in a year?

From about $1,500 for a one-person business with simple books to $20,000 or more once there are employees, several states, or inventory. The total is the monthly bookkeeping fee times twelve, plus the annual returns, plus payroll if you run it. Here’s how that adds up at four common sizes.

Business profile	What it needs	Typical annual cost
Sole proprietor or single-member LLC, under $150K revenue, no employees	Light bookkeeping, one personal return with Schedule C	$1,500 to $5,000
S corporation or partnership, $150K to $500K, owner payroll only	Monthly bookkeeping, business return, personal return, payroll	$5,000 to $10,000
$500K to $2M revenue, a handful of employees	Monthly close, both returns, payroll, quarterly tax planning	$9,000 to $18,000
$2M and up, multiple states or inventory	All of the above plus advisory or fractional CFO	$20,000 to $60,000+

These ranges are built from the published monthly prices above, the national survey averages for returns, and what we quote. The IRS’s own burden estimate is a useful sanity check at the small end: it puts the average business filer’s cost at $610 a year and 21 hours of their own time just for the individual return.

Is it cheaper to hire a bookkeeper in-house?

Almost never, below a few million in revenue. The BLS median wage for a bookkeeping clerk is $50,670 a year. Add the employer’s share of Social Security and Medicare at 7.65%, unemployment taxes, workers’ compensation, and benefits, and the cost to the business passes $60,000. That buys 40 hours a week of capacity for a job that, at most small businesses, fills a fraction of that.

An in-house bookkeeper also still needs an outside CPA for the tax returns and usually for a monthly review, because a single bookkeeper with no oversight is the textbook setup for both errors and theft. Outsourcing at $350 to $1,000 a month costs $4,200 to $12,000 a year, and someone checks the work. The in-house hire starts to make sense when the volume is there: daily invoicing and collections, a large accounts payable run, inventory, or job costing that needs someone on site.

Do I need a CPA, or is a bookkeeper enough?

You need both functions. Whether you need two providers is a separate question. A bookkeeper keeps the records. A CPA decides how the business should be taxed, files the returns, and answers for them. A bookkeeper with no CPA behind them gives you tidy books and no tax strategy, and a CPA with no bookkeeper gives you a return built on whatever the owner could pull together in March.

The DIY versus professional bookkeeping guide covers when doing the books yourself stops making sense, and the guide on when to hire a CPA covers the trigger points: an entity election, a first employee, a second state, an IRS letter, or a loan application.

What makes small business accounting cost more?

Volume and mess. Volume is predictable: more bank and card accounts, more transactions, more employees, more states, inventory, and job costing all add hours. Most firms, ours included, price monthly bookkeeping by the size of the business for that reason.

Mess is the expensive one. Catch-up bookkeeping for a year that was never kept is priced per month of backlog. Ours is half the normal monthly rate for each month behind, on top of the go-forward fee. In the NSA’s fee survey, 78.1% of preparers charged extra for disorganized records. Owners who mix personal and business spending, pay contractors without collecting W-9s, or skip months of reconciliation pay for it in March.

What should I do next?

Decide what you want off your plate, then price that list. Count your bank and credit card accounts, your monthly transactions, your employees, and your states. Any firm worth hiring can turn those four numbers into a fixed monthly quote.

• The CPA cost guide covers hourly, monthly, and per-service CPA pricing.
• The bookkeeping cost guide goes deeper on monthly bookkeeping prices and catch-up work.
• The payroll cost guide compares published payroll software prices and full-service options.
• The tax preparation cost guide has national average fees for every common return.

This guide is general information, not tax advice for your specific situation. Which points apply, and how, depends on your facts.