Guide · Choosing Help
Three titles, three jobs, and real money wasted when they get confused. Here's who does what, what each costs, and the one combination most small businesses actually need.
By Tristan Albach, Intuit QuickBooks ProAdvisor · Updated
The short answer
A bookkeeper keeps your records accurate and current, all year. An accountant interprets those records: analysis, reports, planning. A CPA is a licensed accountant for the regulated, high-stakes work: tax filings, audits, IRS representation. Most small businesses need continuous bookkeeping and a CPA once a year, and confuse the two at their expense.
| Role | What they do | When you need them | Typical cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bookkeeper | Records and categorizes transactions, reconciles accounts, produces monthly P&L and balance sheet | Continuously. Books go stale in weeks, not years. | Monthly flat fee. Ours starts at $150/month. |
| Accountant | Interprets the records: financial analysis, budgeting, cash-flow planning, management reports | When you want the numbers to inform decisions, not just exist. | Hourly or monthly advisory retainer. This layer is what our Standard and Premium tiers include. |
| CPA | Licensed: tax preparation and strategy, audits, IRS representation, entity structure advice | At tax time, and for high-stakes or regulated decisions. | Commonly $150 to $400+ per hour. |
The most common money leak in small business finance isn't paying too much for any one of these. It's paying CPA hourly rates for bookkeeper work. It happens every spring: a business shows up to its tax preparer with a year of uncategorized transactions, and the CPA's office spends billable hours doing cleanup before they can even start the return.
Run the math. A year of monthly bookkeeping at our base rate is $1,800. A few days of cleanup billed at CPA rates can exceed that before the return itself is even touched. Clean books all year usually cost less than messy books once a year.
The reverse confusion costs too: asking a bookkeeper for tax strategy, entity advice, or audit defense. That's licensed work. A good bookkeeper knows where the line is and hands you to a CPA with clean records and a clear summary, which keeps the CPA's clock short.
The healthy setup for most small businesses looks like this: a bookkeeper maintains the records monthly and closes each month with reconciled accounts and readable statements. An advisory layer (sometimes the same person, if they offer it) reviews the numbers with you quarterly: what changed, what it means, what to do. A CPA takes the year-end package and files, and gets a phone call before any big structural decision.
At TK Management Solutions the first two layers are one relationship: monthly bookkeeping covers the record-keeping, and the Standard and Premium tiers add the advisory layer, including quarterly or monthly strategy sessions. We then work alongside your CPA at tax time. We don't replace them, we make them cheaper.
Generally no, and a good one will say so plainly. What we do is make filing fast: reconciled, categorized books mean your tax preparer files instead of untangles.
Usually yes, once a year at minimum. Continuous bookkeeping, periodic CPA. That combination covers most small businesses.
An EA is a federally licensed tax specialist who can also represent you before the IRS. For many small businesses an EA is a solid, often less expensive alternative to a CPA for tax filing. The bookkeeping layer stays the same either way.
The bookkeeper. Catch-up work is bookkeeping, and it's priced like bookkeeping: see our published cleanup pricing. Bring a CPA in after the records are rebuilt.
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Start with the Books
Monthly bookkeeping from $150, with an advisory layer when you're ready for it. Your CPA will thank you.