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Small Businesses Bookkeeper Rate Of Pay  

The Rate Of Pay or hourly rate of a bookkeeper varies with experience as you know. However, there are opportunities to score a bargain.

 

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Watch this video to find out more about our Small Business Bookkeeping Packages and how they can be customised. You will also see quite a bit about our bookkeepers and their rate of pay. If you are a more visual person and don’t feel like reading!

Low End Of The Market $30/hour

Cert 4 recently completed or “just learned on the job”.  Age should not be a basis for discrimination although you will see a younger bookkeeper at this price point. You have to pay for your own Xero etc membership

Mid range : $50/hour

This includes:

  • Decent amount of experience, years.

  • At this rate of pay you will find the bookkeeper works faster & makes less mistakes

  • Harder to find these people & they are easily confused with  over-priced “low-enders”. Don’t fall for that! We offer this rate
High End : $89/hour

They usually have:

  • Industry or situational specific experience

  • All sorts of qualifications e.g. CPA etc and overqualified for the job

  • Abilities and skills that “wow” the customer, but also quickly the wallet! Yes, we offer this service too!

  • Best suited for specific and technical situations or you are after financial management

Now for bookkeeper hiring opportunities with a bargain rate of pay!

Look for these bookkeepers:
  • In between jobs

  • Took some time off. It is like riding a bycicle. They don’t forget but are not too keen to charge their worth i.e. offer bargains

  • Xero specialists we found work faster than generalist. Even with a higher rate, they can end up costing less (I think we fit in this category)

  • Older ones that simply want something to do on the side.

  • You get a wealth of experience without the price tag

  • That most of your friends don’t know (I will explain that statement below)

 As you can probably guess..

Just because one person is impressed by a worker, that doesn’t mean the latter is an ace. That usually means the “friend” referring the “bookkeeper” is simply not that experienced himself & therefore suggesting the wrong person for your job. You may think that is negative.  However, as you know it is not easy to find skillful people at the right price. What are the odds, that this friend of yours knows this gem? Statistically, they are up there with winning a jackpot at Crown, at your first toss of the coin!

 

Most of the time, referrals don’t work out. In fact most of the new customers we get, that find us on Google, come to us once they have tried a referred bookkeeper.

Accounting software or spreadsheets?

No matter what you are using to keep financial records, (Xero, Quickbooks, MYOB, SAP, Reckon etc), avoid people that don’t have experience in yours. It is true that most of them are similar. However, the differences are usually hard to decipher. That means the bookkeeper has to Google or reach out to others to find out what to do. That is already not an enviable situation. However, the situation may worsen quickly as said bookkeeper also burns quickly through that desirable rate of pays trying to figure out how to get the job done. That’s true with any software, really. Paperbase? Every time we would turn someone away who was paper based, we could see it was embarrassing. So, now we se people that also actually specialise in “paper-based”. Horses for courses.

If you suspect you are getting overcharged:

Reasons To Switch Bookkeepers?

How To Compare Rates Of Pay?

You really need a rate and a calculator to do that. And you also need to be good with maths. However, if you still want try this, read this grey section out. We have mapped out how to.

 

Once you have their hourly rates?

Some bookkeepers include the cost of software in their rate somehow. That could make it complex too. Also, there are different memberships in the same program

If they add the cost of software in their pay rate?

Let’s say they use SAP. If they only use Business One, then they are paying less. So if two providers include SAP, ensure you know what product they are familiar with and provide!

How about the tax bit? 

Most of the process should not be done by an expensive, highly skilled tax accountant. An experienced bookkeeper would cost less to achieve the same & you are not getting anything with Mr Fancy Pants!

Are flat rates of pay always better from a bookkeeper?

If it is a smaller business, yes. But for a larger business, you are best placed with our partnered provider. Our flat rate works best for smaller businesses.

Build your own rate?

You would have to be a math wizz. But, yes. why not if so! You can do it. Usually that means you will be providing the software, but their rate includes it already or something similar.

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Adrian Willenberg

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I have not seen anything like his material before and I will keenly follow his ongoing guidance.”

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Contact Us

Want to get your bookkeeping done real fast? There is also more information on our home page.

info@smresearch.com.au

1-800-672-670

5 Melva Court, Sydenham VIC 3037

M-F: 9:30am-5.30pm, S-S: Closed

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TAX AGENT: SM RESEARCH PTY LTD, REGISTRATION NUMBER : 26067757

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 Our Bookkeepers rate of pay rate break up:

Before you delve into our bookkeeping pricing of rates (and make things too complex), there are elements here that will make things simpler :

  • We pay our junior bookkeepers between $20 – $40 per hour

  • Senior bookkeepers are paid between $40 – $60 per hour
  • Our tax agent rate ( e.g. for filing your income tax) is $160 per hour

  • We surveyed the pricing of many bookkeepers and hired quite a few to gather this research.

  • We found many simply leaned on their branding (or the desperate deadlines of their victims) to overcharge by a mile and then some.

*The primary research we did is how we came about our own pricing and bookkeepers rates of pay.

How Much Does A Bookkeeper In Australia Make?

Or the highest salary of a Bookkeeper In Australia?

Or how much should you pay your bookkeeper?

Very interesting questions indeed. At risk of sounding cold and analytical, it really shouldn’t matter. 

If a less experienced bookkeeper takes longer, but also charges less 

v/s

A more experienced bookkeeper takes less, but charges a higher rate of pay

It should in theory equate to the same thing. And yet, somehow, we could never make equal to the same dollar amount.

We provided both levels of bookkeepers and rates of pay 

Then Why Doesn't It Matter?

Or the lowest rates of pay of a Bookkeeper In Australia?

Simply put, the lower paid bookkeeper caused problems too.

So, on top of taking longer and chewing up the lower rate, they created problems. These issues with the accounts took even longer to be fixed.

We saw this happen whenever we dipped our rate below $50 – $55 per hour.

In fact the expensive bookkeeper did two things:

– Many times they didn’t charge and absorbed screw ups in their rate

– There were also less mistakes with the bookkeeping

Re: Bookkeeper rate of pay. Based on our experience employing bookkeepers at different rates of pay, we cannot recommend hiring the best paid bookkeeper you can find enough. 

The alternative is to work with a business like ours. If you would like to do, click here.