Outsourced bookkeeping for a UK small business costs roughly £20 to £224 + VAT a month across the providers we checked on 21 August 2026. Software on its own runs from £0 to £70 a month excluding VAT.
The number that moves your quote most is not your turnover. It is how many transactions run through your bank account each month. Everything else — VAT, payroll, complexity — sits on top of that.
Here is what the market actually charges.
The short answer
| What you’re buying | Typical monthly cost |
|---|---|
| Bookkeeping software only (DIY) | £0 – £70 ex VAT |
| Bookkeeping as an add-on to an accountancy package | from £20 + VAT |
| Bundled online accountancy including bookkeeping | £24.50 – £224 + VAT |
| Independent bookkeeper, hourly | No reliable published average — get a written quote |
| Catch-up on a backlog year | £750 – £850 per financial year |
All figures verified from provider pricing pages on 21 August 2026. Most UK providers quote excluding VAT. Never compare a VAT-inclusive price against a VAT-exclusive one.
What you are actually paying for
Bookkeeping is the recording layer. A bookkeeper categorises every transaction, matches it to the bank, chases the receipts you did not file, and hands your accountant a clean set of books.
That is not the same as accounts preparation. Year-end accounts, the Corporation Tax return and Self Assessment are separate jobs with separate fees. Check what a “bookkeeping” quote includes before you compare it against anything. Some providers bundle VAT returns; most charge for them separately.
Real market prices, August 2026
Bookkeeping as an add-on
| Provider | Price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| The Accountancy Partnership | from £20/month + VAT | Bookkeeping bolted onto an accountancy package |
| The Accountancy Partnership — VAT returns | from £35/month + VAT | Registration through to submission |
Bundled monthly packages that include bookkeeping
| Provider | Price |
|---|---|
| The Accountancy Partnership — sole trader | from £24.50/month + VAT |
| The Accountancy Partnership — limited company | from £39.50/month + VAT |
| Osome Operate | from £71/month + VAT |
| Gorilla Accounting | £125/month + VAT flat |
| Osome Grow | from £137/month + VAT |
| Osome — top tier | £224/month + VAT |
| Sleek Accounting Basic | £900/year list (£75/month) — Sleek publishes no VAT basis |
Two of those rows need reading carefully.
The Accountancy Partnership’s entry prices are the bottom turnover band, £0 to £20,000, and its page states “All prices shown are per month and exclude VAT”. Annualised, that entry band works out at £294 + VAT a year for a sole trader and £474 + VAT for a limited company. Those are the entry band, not an average of what clients actually pay — the firm makes no claim about that, and neither should anyone quoting it.
Sleek is the only row here without a stated VAT basis. Its page advertises “From £50/mo”, footnoted “Price shown is the starting rate for annual billing after 20% discount. Limited time offer.” That is a promotional annual rate, not a list price, and Sleek does not say whether it includes VAT. The list price is £900 a year; the discounted annual rate is £720, or £60 a month. We have quoted the list figure because every other number in these tables is a list figure.
Software, if you do it yourself
| Product | Price |
|---|---|
| Sage Sole Trader — free plan | £0 |
| Pandle — free plan | £0 |
| Pandle Pro | £5/month + VAT |
| Sage Sole Trader — paid | £7/month ex VAT |
| QuickBooks Sole Trader Plus | £10/month + VAT |
| QuickBooks Simple Start | £16/month + VAT |
| Xero Ignite | £18/month ex VAT |
| Sage Accounting Start | £20/month ex VAT |
| FreeAgent — limited company | £33/month ex VAT |
| Xero Ultimate | £70/month ex VAT |
The Xero figures are its prices from 1 September 2026, when UK subscriptions rose. Before that date Ignite was £16 and Ultimate £65. Anything quoting the old four figures — £16, £37, £50, £65 — predates the increase.
FreeAgent is free for NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland and Ulster Bank business current account holders, and for Mettle account holders who make it their primary business account. If you bank with one of those, your software cost is nil and the DIY maths changes completely.
What actually drives your quote
Transaction volume, above everything else. Crunch bands its pricing on average monthly transactions: 0–10, 10–25, 25–50, 50–100, 100–200, and 200+. Six bands, and nothing to do with turnover. A consultancy invoicing four clients a month and a café taking 400 card payments can have identical revenue and wildly different bookkeeping bills.
Before you request a quote, open your bank statement and count the lines for a normal month. That single number will get you a more accurate price than any online calculator.
VAT registration. Registration is compulsory once taxable turnover passes £90,000 on a rolling 12-month basis, and it changes the job. Every transaction now needs a VAT treatment, not just a category. Taxfix gives the cleanest data point in the market for what that is worth: £329 + VAT for a non-VAT-registered company against £419 + VAT for a VAT-registered one, everything else identical. A 27% increase for VAT alone.
Payroll. Priced per head almost everywhere. SmartFiling’s published payroll price is from £15 per employee per month, covering RTI submissions, auto-enrolment, payslips, P60s and year-end returns.
Backlog. The expensive one. Osome charges £850 a year for historical filing and bookkeeping. Sleek charges £750 per financial year for backdated bookkeeping up to 100 transactions. Two years behind costs more than two years of being current.
Complexity. Multi-currency accounts, e-commerce platforms with settlement reports, property portfolios, alphabet share structures and corporate shareholders all attract a premium. So does a director’s loan account that has been used as a personal overdraft.
Why hourly rates are hard to benchmark
Independent bookkeepers commonly bill by the hour, and you will find plenty of blogs quoting a UK average. We could not find a credible published source behind any of those figures, so we are not repeating one.
What we can say: an hourly rate transfers all the volume risk to you. A fixed monthly fee banded on transaction count does not. If you are comparing an hourly bookkeeper against a fixed-fee provider, ask the hourly bookkeeper for an estimated monthly total based on your actual transaction count, in writing.
What cheap quotes leave out
Three things are worth checking line by line.
Is the year-end included? A £20-a-month bookkeeping add-on is exactly that — an add-on. Accounts and the tax return are priced separately.
Is VAT filing included? Under Making Tax Digital, VAT returns must be filed from digital records using compatible software. That is work, and it is usually a separate line.
Is catch-up included? If you are handing over six months of unreconciled transactions, the first invoice will not look like the quote.
The compliance backdrop
Two changes have raised the floor on record keeping.
Making Tax Digital for Income Tax is live now. Sole traders and landlords with qualifying income over £50,000 (measured on their 2024/25 return) were mandated from 6 April 2026. The threshold drops to £30,000 from 6 April 2027 and £20,000 from 6 April 2028. Those in scope keep digital records and file quarterly updates due 7 August, 7 November, 7 February and 7 May, plus a year-end return.
The joint HMRC and Companies House “File your accounts and Company Tax Return” service closed on 31 March 2026. Companies now need commercial software to file a Company Tax Return. Companies House accounts filing remains free, and web filing works until software-only filing begins in April 2028.
Neither change makes bookkeeping optional. Both make sloppy bookkeeping more expensive to fix.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a bookkeeper cost per month in the UK?
Between £20 and £224 + VAT a month across the providers we checked in August 2026. Bookkeeping bolted onto an accountancy package starts at around £20 a month + VAT; a full bundled package including accounts and tax returns runs from about £24.50 to £224 a month + VAT.
Is bookkeeping cheaper than an accountant?
They are different jobs. Bookkeeping is the monthly recording work; accounts preparation and tax filing are annual. Most small businesses need both, which is why bundled monthly packages usually work out cheaper than buying the two separately.
Why do bookkeeping quotes vary so much for the same turnover?
Because turnover is a poor proxy for workload. Transaction volume is what drives the cost, and two businesses with identical revenue can have ten times the difference in monthly transactions. Count the lines on a typical bank statement before asking for a quote.
Do I still need a bookkeeper if I use Xero or QuickBooks?
Software records transactions; it does not decide how they should be treated. Bank feeds guess categories and get them wrong, VAT treatment needs judgement, and year-end adjustments are not automated. Plenty of businesses run their own books successfully, but the software alone is not the whole job.
How much does it cost to catch up on a year of bookkeeping?
Expect £750 to £850 per financial year based on published catch-up prices in August 2026, and more if the volume is high or the records are incomplete. Late filing penalties will already be accruing, so waiting adds to the total.
Get a bookkeeping price that reflects your actual volume
SmartFiling offers bookkeeping on flexible plans built around your transaction volume rather than a headline turnover band — reconciled monthly, VAT-ready, and handed to your year-end team in a state that does not need fixing. We work with Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent, Sage and Dext.
Everything is fixed-fee and agreed upfront. No hourly billing, no surprise year-end invoice.
SmartFiling is the trading name of Ballards Newman (Finchley) Limited, an ICAEW-regulated London practice with over twenty years of UK tax and compliance experience.
