How to Price Bookkeeping Services (Work Backwards From Income)

Practice Runbook · updated 2026-09-22

Most pricing advice for bookkeepers starts with the market: what everyone else charges, what the going rate is in your area. That is the wrong end of the problem. Start with the number you need to earn, subtract the hours you cannot bill, and the rate is not a decision — it is arithmetic.

The arithmetic nobody does

Four inputs, one output:

Revenue needed is 67,000. Billable hours per year are 44 × 22 = 968. Required rate is 67,000 ÷ 968 = 69.21.

That is the floor. Not the aspiration, not the market rate — the number below which you are working for less than you decided you would accept.

The number that breaks most practices

It is the billable hours figure, and almost everyone gets it wrong the same way. A 40-hour week is not 40 billable hours. Subtract:

• Your own bookkeeping, invoicing and chasing
• Client emails that are not chargeable in practice even if they are in theory
• Software updates, CPD, HMRC or IRS changes
• Sales calls with people who do not become clients
• The 20 minutes after an interruption where you are not really working

Realistic for a solo bookkeeper is 20–25 billable hours in a 40-hour week. If your pricing assumes 35, you have built a plan that requires a version of you that does not exist.

Hourly, fixed, or value?

The honest answer for most solo practices is: price fixed, quote from hours.

Clients want a predictable monthly number. You need to know the work fits the hours. So calculate in hours using your required rate, then present a fixed monthly fee. The hourly figure never leaves your spreadsheet — it just stops you from agreeing to a 250/month client who eats nine hours.

Why pure hourly billing hurts you

Because it punishes competence. You get faster every year; billing by the hour means getting faster makes you poorer. The client also cannot budget, so every efficiency conversation becomes a fee conversation.

Why pure value pricing is oversold

Value pricing works when the work is advisory and the outcome is measurable. Compliance bookkeeping is neither. Charging "what it's worth" for a VAT return is a conversation you will lose. Use value pricing for the advisory add-ons, not the monthly close.

Setting the fixed fee

1. Estimate monthly hours honestly, then add 20% — every new client is messier than the onboarding call suggested.
2. Multiply by your required rate.
3. Round up to something clean.
4. Write down what is not included. This single step prevents most scope creep.

A client you estimated at 4 hours, plus 20%, at 69.21, is 332 — call it 350/month, with cleanup billed separately.

Reviewing the price you already set

The client who is quietly unprofitable is rarely the one you suspect. It is usually a long-standing client whose business grew while the fee did not.

Once a quarter, compare fee against hours actually logged, per client. The ones where effective rate has fallen below your required rate are the conversation list. In practice most solo bookkeepers find one or two clients paying an effective rate half of everyone else's.

If you do not track hours per client, you cannot know this, and you will keep discovering it by feeling tired. Tracking twenty seconds a day is cheaper than resenting a client for a year.

Raising prices on existing clients

Three things make it survivable:

• Annual, scheduled, expected. A stated annual review in your terms turns an awkward request into a policy.
• Tie it to scope, not to inflation. "Your transaction volume has roughly doubled since we agreed this fee" is a fact. "Costs have gone up" invites negotiation.
• Give a date, not a debate. Say what the new fee is and when it starts.

Expect to lose a client occasionally. If your rate calculation is right, losing the lowest-paying client and replacing them at the correct rate is a raise, not a loss.

Put the numbers somewhere they update

The calculation above changes every time you take on a client, raise a fee, or lose a week to illness — which means it belongs in a sheet that recalculates, not in a note you did once. The workbook in the kit below includes the pricing calculator described here, plus a per-client profitability view that divides fee by hours actually logged and turns red where the effective rate has fallen below your floor.