What does a bookkeeper cost for your startup?

One of the first questions founders ask when outsourcing their bookkeeping: what will it cost? The honest answer: it depends on the pricing model, and that model also determines what you get back. Here's how the price is built up, where the hidden costs sit, and what really matters for a startup.

Bookkeepers charge in roughly two ways. The classic model is hourly: you pay per hour worked, and the rate depends on experience and specialisation. The alternative is a fixed monthly fee, where you know in advance what you pay and what's done for it.

For a startup that difference is bigger than it looks. With hourly billing, your invoice can grow with every question you ask and every busy month, exactly in the phases where you already lack overview. With a fixed fee you know where you stand and the price fits your stage.

The price of a bookkeeper is mainly driven by four things:

• Your legal form: a BV brings more obligations than a sole proprietorship, such as corporate income tax and annual accounts that must be filed.
• Your transaction volume: more invoices, bank transactions and expense claims means more work.
• Staff: payroll is a specialism of its own and counts in the price.
• What's included and what isn't: just recording entries is very different from a complete service with filings, annual accounts and reporting.

So with every quote, don't just ask 'what does it cost' but above all 'what's included'. Two offers with the same monthly price can cover completely different services.

The monthly price isn't always the whole story. Watch out for these items:

• Time-and-materials add-ons: a low monthly fee with 'extra work billed hourly' can turn out more expensive than an honest fixed rate.
• The annual accounts as a separate item: sometimes a hefty invoice still lands at the end of the year.
• Setup costs: some firms charge separately for onboarding or migration.
• Cost per question: with hourly billing, every email or call can cost money, which makes founders postpone questions. That's exactly what you don't want.

The real cost of a bookkeeper isn't on the invoice. A cheap bookkeeper who updates your administration once a quarter leaves you flying blind on your cash position, burn and runway the rest of the time. One wrong decision on outdated figures, or an investor meeting where you owe them the answer, costs more than a year of bookkeeping fees. So don't compare on price alone, but on what you get back: how current are your figures, and can you steer on them?

This is the part of the bill that appears in no price comparison, and it is real money. For VAT the tax administration has two separate penalties, and you can receive both in the same period.

• Late filing: a fixed amount if your return is late or missing. For VAT there is a margin of seven calendar days after the deadline in which no penalty follows. Repeated lateness can raise the amount.
• Late payment: a percentage of the amount you pay late or not at all, with a floor and a ceiling. Here too the percentage can rise if it keeps happening.

The current amounts are in the sources under this article, because they are adjusted periodically. The point is not the amount but that it accumulates: four quarters and two kinds of default. A monthly fee that is slightly lower stops being lower the moment one deadline is missed.

With us that is three things, and none of them arrives unannounced.

• Payroll: always 20 euros per employee per month, payslips and the payroll tax return included.
• Formal annual accounts that have to be filed: additional work we quote separately up front.
• An extra entity: a holding or second BV is its own administration with its own tier.

So what you compare between firms is never a single number. For every price, ask whether the returns, the year-end close and onboarding are in it, and what changes the moment you hire someone.

We keep it simple: fixed monthly fees, based on your invoice volume (the number of sales and purchase invoices we process for you per month):

• Starter: 250 euros per month (0 to 75 invoices)
• Growth: 325 euros per month (76 to 125 invoices)
• Scale: 475 euros per month (126 to 200 invoices)

Every plan includes your full bookkeeping, VAT and corporate tax returns, the full year-end close and daily-current figures in a real-time dashboard, per entity. No time-and-materials and no setup costs: onboarding and migration are part of your monthly fee. Add payroll for 20 euros per employee per month, and if you want a formal set of annual accounts, we provide it as an optional add-on at an agreed fee. So you know exactly what you pay and what you get for it, in advance.

With hourly billing you pay for time, and time is exactly what is unpredictable at a startup. A month with a funding round, a new payment provider or your first employee takes more hours than a quiet one, and that busy month is precisely when you want to spend the least time on your administration.

The second effect is subtler and more expensive: if every question costs money, you start postponing questions. The consequence is predictable. Private payments sitting on the wrong ledger account for months, a current account nobody has explained, VAT reclaimed on costs that do not qualify. None of it is unfixable, and all of it takes more time to unpick afterwards than asking would have cost up front.

Because our price scales on invoices, you can work out where you land before you even talk to us. Take your last full month and add two numbers: the sales invoices you sent, and the purchase invoices, receipts and expense claims you received or paid. The first is in your invoicing tool, the second mostly in your mailbox and on your business account.

• Sales invoices: everything you send customers, credit notes included.
• Purchase invoices, receipts and claims: hosting, tools, rent, travel and your team expense claims.
• Not counted: bank transactions, VAT splits, depreciation entries and payment-provider payouts.
• Volume moving around? Take the three-month average, which is what we base your plan on anyway.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. A Stripe or Mollie payout containing twenty sales is one line on your bank account, while the invoices underneath it do count. The other way around, a VAT split or a depreciation entry is administrative work we do that never touches your plan.

To make it concrete, three profiles you see often in practice. The amounts are our own rates, the volumes are fictional.

• Pre-revenue BV with the founder on the payroll: 4 sales invoices and 22 purchase invoices a month, 26 in total. That is Starter at 250 euros, plus 20 euros payroll, so 270 euros a month.
• SaaS after a first round, three employees: 60 sales invoices and 45 purchase invoices, 105 in total. That is Growth at 325 euros, plus three times 20 euros, so 385 euros a month.
• Scale-up with a holding above it: the operating BV sits at 130 invoices (Scale) and the holding at 3 (Starter). You pay per administration, plus payroll for your team. For structures like that we make a proposal, because the two administrations are rarely comparable in size.

In all three cases the VAT and corporate tax returns, the full year-end close and the real-time dashboard are included. Want a formal set of annual accounts, for the KVK filing or for investors, and we quote it separately up front.

As clear as what it does include. Our plans cover your administration, your filings, the year-end close and your reporting. What is not in there: a formal set of annual accounts, which we provide as an optional add-on at an agreed fee, and advice. Strategic and financial advice, tax planning, valuations and a statutory audit are a different profession with different responsibility. Run into a question like that and we say so, and point you to someone who does it for a living.

That reads like a limitation and it saves you money: you are not paying towards advisory capacity you do not use, and you do not get half an answer from someone fitting it in between other work.

There are three moments, and none of them is a surprise. You grow structurally past a tier boundary, and we move you up with the difference prorated. You hire someone, and payroll adds 20 euros per employee per month. Or an entity is added, because a holding or second BV is its own administration with its own tier. A single busy month changes nothing, because we look at your average.

Part of your price is set by you, not by negotiating but by not making the work bigger than it is. Four things make the most difference in practice.

• One business account, and nothing private paid out of it. Every private payment from the company is an item somebody has to work out and record in the current account.
• Deliver invoices digitally and on time, not as a photo of a receipt at the end of the quarter.
• Pass on payroll changes before the payroll tax return goes out, not after. A correction afterwards is more work than the change itself.
• Keep costs that are not business costs out of it. It costs you no deduction and it leaves a clean administration for when someone looks into your books.

None of these four changes your tier, because that hangs on your invoice volume. What they do is stop questions going back and forth every month about items nobody can reconstruct any more, and that is exactly the work an hourly rate bills you for.

You can, and it is not a free option. You avoid a bookkeeping invoice, but you pay three other things: a subscription to bookkeeping software, your own time, and the risk that something is wrong. The first is the smallest item. The second is founder time, which comes out of your product or your customers. The third only shows up later, because an error in your VAT or your ledger often surfaces months after the entry.

For a sole proprietorship with a handful of invoices a month, doing it yourself is a defensible choice. With a BV the picture changes: corporate income tax arrives, annual accounts have to be filed with the KVK, and as soon as you pay yourself there is a payroll administration with monthly returns. That is not a question of ability but of recurring deadlines that do not move with your sprint.

A detail that is rarely stated anywhere and does affect what you net pay: our monthly fee carries VAT, and you can reclaim it if you are VAT-registered. For a BV filing VAT returns, the effective cost is therefore the amount excluding VAT. If you weigh our price against another firm hourly rate, compare the same quantity: both excluding VAT, and both over a full year rather than per month or per hour.

• There are two pricing models: hourly and a fixed monthly fee. For startups, fixed gives the most grip.
• The price depends on your legal form, transaction volume, staff and what's actually included.
• Watch for hidden costs: hourly add-ons, a separate annual-accounts invoice and setup fees.
• Don't compare on price alone but on currency: outdated figures are the most expensive cost of all.
• With us: fixed monthly fees from 250 to 475 euros per entity, no surprises.