Anyone here use an independent bookkeeper for Quickbooks work?

LeeH · 06-27-2006, 09:18 PM

If so, what do you pay? Hourly? Weekly? Monthly? I've had a few people ask me to work on their Quickbooks files and wonder what's a reasonable rate to charge.

cashflyer · 06-28-2006, 06:26 AM

I use Quickbooks Enterprise.

I pay my accountant $90 per month which covers all quarterly filings (payroll, estimated tax, etc), plus any repairs to my screwups.

I also pay an additional fee at tax time for the yearly filing.

These stated fees cover both my business and my personal filings.

lendaddy · 06-28-2006, 12:41 PM

Wow, $90 a month? I pay $550 a month. I hope we are talking about different things.

VaSteve · 06-28-2006, 04:45 PM

Wayne, you only use quickbooks? I figured PP would require something more sophisticated.

LeeH · 06-28-2006, 09:45 PM

The spread is huge. I've seen people running ads to hire bookkeepers with Quickbooks experience paying $10/hour and I've see bookkeepers (not accountants or CPAs) charging as high as $65/hour.

RoninLB · 10:42 PM

I can find out what program big time NYC accountants would use and do use. The two may be different. Programing and file upgrading can be a big cost issue etc. For sure a client can pay anywhere from $125-$350/hr as an entity's paperwork works its way up thru the food chain in one accounting firm. A small time customer is in the $10k fee range and below that is small small time who probably needs just a good hustler.

You get what you pay for. The more complicated the entity the more designed the books have to be to save the most tax dollars.. meanwhile try to find an accountant who can win an argument with the IRS and you've found a good one. That's all I know.

if needed just be specific in what I should ask about.

ps:
at this time I would say that you want to use a program that would be beneficial to outside auditors usage just in case a history has to be constructed for the IRS. Having the outside auditors phone number is like having the phone number of a good criminal defense attorney imo.

cashflyer · 06-29-2006, 04:37 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by lendaddy
Wow, $90 a month? I pay $550 a month. I hope we are talking about different things.

Who knows... I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, and I barely passed my college accounting classes.
I guess you could think of it as me paying her $270 per quarter, since she really doesn't do anything with my books on a monthly basis.

Every quarter she prepares all my filing reports and makes necessary corrections to my QBs.

And she answers questions when I call her because I can't figure out what category to put something into.

She is a real, licensed CPA. She's not related to me or anything like that... no family discount or GF discount or nothing. That's just her standard fee.

Maybe it's because my business is small??

lendaddy · 06-29-2006, 04:47 AM

Well, I'm like Wayne....I use QB just to manage accounts but my accountant takes the data from there and takes care of every thing else. I get monthly statements. I also have a separate payroll service, so they're not doing that either.

My business is not that big, <20 employees. Daddy feels queasy