How to price bookkeeping services for general contractors
Bookkeepers often initially price low to get clients in the door, causing confusion when it is time to reassess rates for new engagement letters. Finding a solid, across-the-board quoting method is difficult because past rates fluctuate wildly, with clients' previous bookkeepers charging a lot more or way less for the same work.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Pricing low initially just to get people in the door.Did this help you?
- 2Following a rule of average number of transactions multiplied by $2 or $3.Did this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I priced low to get people in the door and really need to reassess when sending out engagement letters for 2027.”source ↗
“A couple times I took a client on and saw that their other bookkeeper was charging a lot more, and other times, their current bookkeeper is charging way less.”source ↗
“I am so confused over this and want to just get something that is solid across the board.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 3Why is business invoicing and deposit billing so messy?
- 4How to bill clients for API costs and software licenses
- 4Taking over bookkeeping with no records or account logins
- 17How to handle expense reports without being good at math
- 30How to clean up months of messy client expense records
- 3How do you set up a manual journal layout for budgeting and net worth?