Most published pricing for outsourced bookkeeping is written by the people selling it, including this page. So treat every number below as a range to argue from, not a rate card — and read the section on what the quoted figure leaves out before you compare two quotes.
Published market ranges for outsourced bookkeeping run roughly $300 to $2,500 a month in the US and £100 to £1,200 a month in the UK for small and mid-sized businesses, rising sharply for multi-entity or controller-supported work. Offshore hourly rates are commonly quoted at $10 to $25 against $40 to $75 onshore. The price is driven by transaction volume, number of bank and card accounts, and how much reconciliation the books actually need — not by the size of the business.
Want a straight answer on what your volume would cost? WhatsApp us your monthly transaction count and number of accounts.
Quick Summary
| Engagement level | US, per month | UK, per month |
| Basic — categorisation, bank rec, simple statements | $300 – $600 | £100 – £300 |
| Standard — multiple accounts, monthly close, P&L and balance sheet | $600 – $1,500 | £250 – £600 |
| Full service — AP/AR support, payroll coordination | $1,200 – $2,500+ | £400 – £1,200 |
| Complex or multi-entity — consolidation, accrual, advanced reporting | $2,500 – $5,000+ | £1,200 – £3,500+ |
| Controller-supported close and review | $3,500 – $7,500+ | Quoted case by case |
| Rate comparison | Commonly quoted |
| Offshore hourly | $10 – $25 |
| US-based hourly | $40 – $75 |
| UK outsourced hourly | £20 – £35 (range £13 – £60+) |
| Dedicated offshore FTE, monthly | $3,000 – $6,500 |
| Half-time offshore equivalent | $1,500 – $3,000 |
💡 TaxKitab Tip Before you ask anyone for a price, count two things: how many transactions hit your bank and card accounts in a typical month, and how many months of those are currently unreconciled. The first sets the ongoing fee. The second is a separate catch-up project that almost every provider quotes separately and most buyers do not realise they are about to be billed for. A business that has been behind for a year is buying two things, and a quote that covers only the first will be revised upward in month two.
What Actually Moves the Price
Not revenue. Not headcount. Four things.
Transaction volume. The single biggest driver. UK providers commonly reference £0.50 to £2 per transaction, with the per-unit rate falling as volume rises. A business doing 80 transactions a month and one doing 800 are different engagements regardless of turnover.
Number of accounts and feeds. Each bank account, credit card, payment processor and merchant account is a separate reconciliation. A business with one current account is far cheaper than one with the same volume spread across six.
Condition of the books. Clean, current books cost less to maintain than books with negative inventory, unapplied payments and a suspense account nobody has cleared. The diagnostic matters — our notes on where inventory valuation goes wrong and VAT and sales tax coding errors describe the conditions that turn a standard engagement into a cleanup.
Scope beyond bookkeeping. AP and AR management, payroll coordination, multi-currency, and consolidation each move the engagement up a tier. Review and sign-off by a qualified reviewer is another tier again.
What the Quoted Figure Usually Leaves Out
Compare quotes on these, not on the headline number.
- Catch-up or cleanup of prior periods, almost always quoted separately
- Software licences — whose subscription, and who pays
- Year-end accounts and statutory filing, which is usually a different engagement
- Tax returns of any kind, almost always separate
- Transaction volume bands — what happens when you exceed the band, and whether the fee steps or stays
- Turnaround commitment — monthly close by which working day
- Review — whether a second person checks the work, and at what level
A $600 quote with no cleanup, no software, no review and a volume cap is not cheaper than an $900 quote that includes all four. It is a different product.
The In-House Comparison
This is where the arithmetic usually settles it.
UK figures commonly published put a bookkeeper’s salary at £25,000 to £32,000, with a fully loaded annual cost of £34,000 to £61,000 or more once employer NI, pension, software, recruitment and overhead are counted. Against outsourced annual costs of roughly £600 to £1,800 at the basic end and £7,200 to £24,000 for a complex SME, the comparison is not close for anything below a full workload.
The honest caveat: a full-time in-house person is available all day, knows the business, and handles the things nobody wrote into a scope. That has real value and the cost comparison does not capture it. The decision usually turns on whether you have enough work to fill a role, which we set out in more detail in in-house versus outsourced accounting.
UAE: Why the Range Is Different
UAE pricing is quoted less consistently than US or UK pricing, and published ranges are thinner, so we are not going to invent a table for it.
What is specific to the UAE is that the bookkeeping standard is now set by corporate tax law rather than by preference. Records must be kept for seven years, accrual accounting is the default below specified thresholds, and audited financial statements are required above a revenue threshold. That raises the floor on what counts as adequate bookkeeping and therefore on what it costs — the detail is in what UAE corporate tax requires of your books.
For Accounting Firms Rather Than Businesses
If you are a CPA or accounting practice buying capacity rather than a business buying bookkeeping, the pricing shape is different: dedicated FTE or shared per-client support rather than a monthly bookkeeping fee. Commonly quoted figures are $1,500 to $3,000 a month for a half-time equivalent and $3,000 to $6,500 for a full-time equivalent, with per-client shared support quoted at $400 to $1,500 a month.
What those figures do or do not include — a team lead, a reviewer, cover during leave — is the thing to ask about, because it is where two superficially similar quotes diverge. The delivery model itself is set out in outsourcing bookkeeping to India for CPA firms, and the professional obligations that come with it in the buyer’s checklist for UK firms.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does nobody publish a simple price list? Because transaction volume and book condition vary more than business size does, and a fixed list would be wrong for most buyers in both directions. Any provider can give a firm number once they have your volume and have looked at the current state of the ledger.
Are these ranges TaxKitab’s prices? No. These are market ranges published across the industry, given so you can compare quotes. We do not publish our own fees on this site.
Is offshore always cheaper? On an hourly basis, usually. On a total basis, only if the work does not have to be redone. The rate matters less than whether there is a reviewer and whether the month closes on time.
What should a cleanup cost? It depends entirely on how many months are open and how bad the starting point is. Ask for it to be scoped as a fixed-fee project after a diagnostic, not billed hourly open-ended.
Does the price include tax filing? Usually not, and in our case not at all outside India — our overseas scope is accounting and bookkeeping. Returns are filed by the client or their local tax agent.
How often should the fee be reviewed? Annually, or whenever transaction volume moves out of the agreed band. A fee that has not been looked at in three years is usually wrong in one direction or the other.
References
- Published 2026 pricing guides from UK and US outsourced bookkeeping providers, including AcoBloom (UK and US), Etisson and CoCountant
- UAE record-keeping and audit requirements: Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 and Ministerial Decision No. 84 of 2025
⚠️ Every range above comes from published provider pricing guides, not from independent survey data, and providers have an interest in where those ranges sit. Treat them as a starting point for comparison and get written quotes against your own transaction volume.
Call or WhatsApp: +91 7448200422 | Email: info@taxkitab.com
See our Outsourced Accounting service, or the USA, UK and UAE pages for how engagements are scoped. Get in touch.
