Low-cost bookkeeping for small businesses - flat-fee services, software with a human bolted on, and the do-it-yourself route - written up one at a time, with the trade-off printed on the slip instead of a figure at the bottom.
New to the subject? Start with what a bookkeeping service actually does.
Cheap means the low end of what a real service costs, not free. Where a price appears it comes from the provider's own page, with the date it was read.
Bench, Merritt, Wave Advisors, QuickBooks Experts and Bookkeeper360 sit at very different points on cost and on what the fee includes.
Start here
How much does a bookkeeping service cost for a small business?
Read the guide ExplainerWhat's the difference between bookkeeping and accounting for a small business?
Read the explainer ShortlistWhat's the cheapest way to keep clean books for a brand new business?
Follow the steps ShortlistSix questions a cheap bookkeeping quote raises. For the whole field at once, start with Cheapest Bookkeeping Services for Small Business.
Where the monthly-fee services actually differ once the headline rate stops being the difference.
Every low-cost option trades something away - catch-up work, a named bookkeeper, tax filing.
What the DIY route asks of you in hours each month before it saves you anything.
When handing the books over earns its fee over software you run yourself, and when it plainly does not.
Months behind is where cheap gets expensive. What to ask before handing anyone a backlog.
Onboarding, catch-up, per-account charges and tax season are where quotes stop matching each other.
What every slip on the spike is held to, the Bench review included.
No ratings, no stars, no tier boards. Where one service is the better buy, the page says so in a sentence you can argue with.
Prices are dated and taken from the providers' own pages. Nothing here describes a hands-on trial nobody ran.
Some links may earn a commission. That moves nothing up the spike, and the funding page sets out how it works.
How far behind your books are sets the price more than the provider does. Count the months first.
A cheap tier is defined by its exclusions. Those are the lines worth putting next to each other.
Published pricing and quoted pricing drift apart. The quote is the document that matters later.
Counting the backlog first is worked through in Cheapest Way to Get Caught Up on Late Books; reading what a fee leaves out, in What Bookkeeping Really Costs, and What Drives the Price.
Common questions
The index