What are the books really costing you?
You absolutely can do the bookkeeping yourself. The question is whether it is the best use of your time. Move the sliders to see it in dollars and in weeks.
Estimated cost of your time, about
$16,400/yr
That’s 236 hours a year, or 5.9 full work weeks, spent on financial administration. $1,200 of time every month. This is an estimate of time and opportunity cost, not cash you spend: hours × what the hour is worth, plus staff hours at their rate, over twelve months, plus the year-end hours.
And it doesn’t count the decisions made without reliable numbers: the hire you delayed, the cash crunch you didn’t see coming, the penalty that could have been avoided.
See what it takes to get this off your plateThe decisions made without reliable numbers
The calculator counts hours. It cannot count the hire you delayed because nobody could say whether it was affordable, the cash crunch that arrived without warning, or the penalty that a reconciled set of books would have caught.
Those are the costs leadership feels most, and they are the ones a monthly close and a forward view of cash remove.
- Full-charge bookkeeping closes the books on a set date every month. How it works
- Behind right now? Cleanup and catch-up come first. Start there
- Want the numbers to drive decisions? Advisory
From the blog
What “full-charge” bookkeeping actually covers
Full-charge bookkeeping means one person owns the whole cycle, from transactions to the monthly close and the reports. Here is what that includes and what it does not.
Read
Months behind on the books? Here is where to start
A calm, practical order of operations for catching up bookkeeping that is months or years behind, and how to keep it from happening again.
Read
How to hand your CPA clean books at year-end
What CPA-ready books look like, why they usually lower your tax-prep bill and reduce stress, and the short list to work through before year-end.
Read
Know where you stand before your next big decision
Take the free Financial Score, or request a 20-minute call. No pitch, just questions about how your books are handled today.
