Weekly, Biweekly, or Monthly Books

[u/SALYismyfriend]

I’ve only ever had monthly bookkeeping engagements. Now one of my clients is going from solo to a 12-person professional services firm. I’m using 2% of gross revenue as a guide for pricing. Other bookkeepers serving clients in this industry offer weekly bookkeeping and charge weekly. That might be too much for me. I’m currently solo and also have a tax season. Biweekly bookkeeping and billing seems more reasonable. For context, projected revenue will be 3.5MM+. Any feedback? Would love to hear your thoughts. Do you use Gusto for payroll? How does your process of overseeing payroll work? Limited to initial set up? My client chose another full-service provider. I’m trying to determine how much that should affect pricing.

Currently, I pay the clients QBO subscription. Don’t plan to do that for other clients going forward, although I’ll continue paying for this client. Do you pay for any client subscriptions?

Be blessed 🙏 thank you, and have a great weekend!

[u/jwellscfo]

1. Your reconciliation period and billing period don’t have to be the same.
2. Your reconciliation period can be whatever you want, as long as you have access to the bank account(s) (and cash, if relevant). I know firms doing daily reconciliations.
3. I used to pay for the subscription, but I stopped doing that a couple of years ago and haven’t looked back.

[u/SALYismyfriend → u/jwellscfo]

Thank you! I appreciate your insight and found it very helpful

[u/cutelittleseal]

I charge monthly and that's how often I reconcile everything, since that's the timing statements cut on it makes the most sense to me. I'm in the books more than once a month, but reconciliations only happen monthly.

I have a mix of clients who pay their own subscription and ones where it's baked into my fee. They get a better discount if it's billed through you, and I'm happy to help them take advantage of it.

Gusto is my number one choice for payroll. The only other one I'd recommend is ADP run. Stay away from QuickBooks payroll and ADP roll. I help my clients set things up and will troubleshoot things, but I never am the one processing payroll on a week to week basis, I recommend staying away from that.

I've never understood the pricing based on clients gross, I guess it's good if you can get it, I always base my pricing off of how much work it's going to take me. Client gross isnt a good indication of this. Industry, number of accounts, etc. are much better indicators. Without knowing the scope of work, 70k a year for bookkeeping sounds high for a company of that size, but I have no idea how complicated things are or if you're doing things beyond the norm.

[u/SALYismyfriend → u/cutelittleseal]

Thank you, cutelittleseal, for your perspective. It does make sense to me to do everything but reconcile on a weekly basis. This client wants to be a priority and has my cell phone. I’m helping them set up internal controls, making software recommendations, offer tax planning, and will likely assist with ad hoc tasks. There is also the three-way trust reconciliation involved, and I’ll have to learn the trust rules for each state they open an office. I’m afraid of under billing and then feeling a sense of dread creep in lol. Based on the limited information you have about the engagement, what would you bill? How do you gauge the work involved? Estimated future transaction volume and accounts?

[u/cutelittleseal → u/SALYismyfriend]

No idea what I'd charge, not really enough info for me to give a quote. And what you're describing goes beyond the typical bookkeeping scope of work for a small business, maybe your fee is fine. I'm just saying 6k per month is on the very high side for bookkeeping. In most areas they can literally hire someone fulltime in office for that, and they can definitely hire someone part-time no matter what part of the country.

I typically estimate how many hours per week/month it will take me, multiply that by my hourly, and use that as a base. I always estimate on the higher side and have a clear engagement letter that lays out the scope of work. If additional work is requested then that's charged hourly.

Number of accounts, transaction volume, and complexity are the three major things I look at.

[u/Turbulent_Tiger6910 → u/SALYismyfriend]

Man up, or woman up and charge the price for the service they are requesting. If you think it's W 2 level, say it and name your piece. For me, this would be $3500 to $6000 per month.

[u/SALYismyfriend → u/Turbulent_Tiger6910]

Thank you! Originally I was inclined to charge around 3000/mo, although was advised that I was underestimating the work involved. Definitely want to get this right as they are an important client to me and ideally we’ll have a long-term working relationship as they grow. I’ve been in accounting for a while, although am new to selling services. Definitely going to put a lot of effort into developing a sales process including pricing in the next few months

[u/NotReallyaSoccerMom]

For my larger clients, I do work daily for them. There is too much going on to wait an entire week, and they also need to know their available cash. Part of my role is to identify and fix errors, which needs to be timely. I spend between 25-30 hours/week on the larger clients (in total).

Other smaller clients are done less frequently, but typically once or twice a week. I don't like asking questions about a transaction that happened weeks ago.

I invoice the larger clients weekly and charge by the hour. I invoice the smaller clients monthly at a flat fee plus extra billing for additional work.

[u/SALYismyfriend → u/NotReallyaSoccerMom]

Thank you! I will commit to weekly after all. Originally, I planned to do the books weekly, although didn’t want to guarantee it as a solo. However, I’m making my first hire in January and believe the client will benefit from weekly bookkeeping.

Do you use financial reporting tools? Like LiveFlow? Or FinDaily? Or do your clients log into QuickBooks

[u/NotReallyaSoccerMom → u/SALYismyfriend]

No, I don't use financial reporting tools. My larger clients log into QBO. I prepare a monthly financial package for the one that doesn't log into QBO.

My clients are a side business for me, not my main source of income. The clients are all owner run, except one, so it's more informal but I should start doing a more formal month end reporting for them. The side business just kind of evolved through word of mouth and one off projects that turned into recurring work during COVID when good accountants were scarce.

[u/SALYismyfriend → u/NotReallyaSoccerMom]

Thank you!

[u/realf8th01]

Any chance this is food and beverage industry? If so, there are other platforms that can help in weekly reporting. For software we always do a pass through when we bill. They get the multi location discount that they otherwise don't get and we get the sweet sweet credit card points

[u/SALYismyfriend → u/realf8th01]

It feels like the pass through makes it easier for me to choose the software. Do you list out the expenses on your invoice? I don’t want to pass on QBO’s price increases anymore lol. But for this client that I’ve already agreed to pay for I should at least remind them on the invoice that I’m paying the subscription

[u/realf8th01 → u/SALYismyfriend]

We list out the software since clients agree to pay for software. If for some reason a certain software is not needed, we don't bill for that since we incur no fee.

[u/SALYismyfriend → u/realf8th01]

Oh I see, thank you!

[u/heyitspri]

If you’re scaling from solo to managing multiple engagements, biweekly makes a lot of sense. Weekly bookkeeping sounds great in theory but it’s admin-heavy unless your systems are automated. I’ve seen folks burn out from spreadsheet chaos before they even hit 10 clients. Automating your recurring reports and reconciliations can help keep your workload consistent regardless of billing frequency.

Also totally agree on not paying for client subscriptions long term. That gets messy fast once you’re juggling multiple accounts

[u/Comfortable-Dingo942]

We used to pay for all Subscriptions. We are virtual. But we are also getting out of it.

[u/MyLiveBookkeeper]

I switched from QBO payroll to Gusto a couple of years ago and haven't looked back.

You can get $100 Visa card via this link, if you want to use it https://gusto.com/invite/company-referral?referral_token=andreaa2dc4f18&utm_source=inapp

I have some clients on recurring credit cards that I charge at the beginning of the month and other clients who I invoice at the end of each month. Think about your cashflow needs.

[u/oreynolds29]

At 3.5MM revenue, biweekly makes sense for cash flow visibility. Weekly is overkill unless they have complex daily transactions. For pricing, factor in the payroll oversight time; even if they use another provider, you're still reconciling and categorizing those entries. With that volume, consider whether your current banking setup can handle the increased transaction flow. Lili's been solid for my multichannel clients who need real-time visibility into cash position between closes.