What Bookkeeping CostsBookkeeping fees for a small business, held against a wage

The wage that can be cited

Read on the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook page for bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks, at bls.gov/ooh/office-and-administrative-support/bookkeeping-accounting-and-auditing-clerks.htm. The median annual wage was 50,670 dollars. The same quick facts line shows 24.36 dollars an hour. The lowest ten percent earned less than 36,000 dollars and the highest ten percent earned more than 74,550 dollars. Those figures are wages for employees in that occupation. A fee a firm charges a small business is a different object, and so is any rate from this practice.

Seller pages also print monthly ranges. Those ranges move. A citation that no longer matches its source is worse than a gap, so the ranges are not copied onto this page. Hold the clerk wage beside the quote as a picture of an employee's pay. The review, the software, and the return sit outside that wage, so the eight questions still have to be asked of the number you are holding.

Two facts move a business out of the middle of any range, once a range is even in play. One is the size of the month, meaning transactions, accounts, entities, and payroll setup. The other is whether the return is prepared from the close. Neither fact is visible in a headline number.

How to use the wage without being fooled by it

Put the wage next to the quote as a reference for what an employed clerk is paid, not as a ceiling and not as a floor for a firm. A firm also carries review, software, and the time to make the month survive a return. Leaving those out is how a wage gets mistaken for a price.

The quotes get opened at the kitchen table, and the argument starts before anyone has named the month. A quote accepted between courses still has to be one you can explain on Monday, with the accounts and the return written in the margin.

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