How Much Does Contractor Bookkeeping Cost?

What Contractor Bookkeeping Actually Costs in 2026

Done-for-you contractor bookkeeping in 2026 runs from around $249 a month for a solo operator with a single truck and no payroll up through $1,299 a month and above for larger shops running multiple crews, job costing across active projects, full payroll, and 1099 subcontractor tracking. Those numbers are not arbitrary. They reflect the amount of work involved in closing the books correctly every month.

At TradeBookkeepingPro, pricing follows a four-tier ladder: Truck at $249/mo, Crew at $499/mo, Shop at $799/mo, and Builder from $1,299/mo. Every plan is month-to-month with no setup fee. The right tier depends on how your business is built, not just how much revenue you do.

• Truck ($249/mo): solo operator, one checking account, no payroll, straightforward job flow.
• Crew ($499/mo): small crew, multiple accounts, basic payroll, job costing across active projects.
• Shop ($799/mo): multi-crew shop, payroll, 1099 sub tracking, AR/AP, more complex job cost structure.
• Builder ($1,299+/mo): larger operations with multiple crews, significant transaction volume, WIP tracking, and complex reporting.
• All plans: month-to-month. No setup fee. Cancel anytime.

What Drives the Price Up (or Down)

Bookkeeping is priced on work, not on revenue. Two contractors with the same annual revenue can have very different bookkeeping complexity and therefore very different monthly rates. The factors that actually move the price are predictable once you know what to look for.

Number of bank and card accounts is the starting point. Each account needs to reconcile every month. One checking account and one card is a compact set of books. Three checking accounts, two cards, a line of credit, and an equipment loan is a meaningfully larger reconciliation load.

Payroll is the next big driver. Running payroll for W-2 employees, job-costing labor to each project, tracking payroll taxes and burden, and reconciling your payroll provider to QuickBooks every month adds real hours to the close. Whether you run payroll or not is one of the clearest dividing lines between the Crew and Shop tiers.

Subcontractors are a multiplier. Paying a couple of subs per year is different from paying fifteen or twenty regularly. Each sub needs a W-9 on file, a running payment total tracked through the year, and a 1099-NEC confirmed at filing time. The more subs you pay, the more 1099 administration sits inside the monthly work.

Job costing depth is the fourth factor. A solo operator with simple jobs and no WIP has a lighter costing structure. A shop running five active jobs simultaneously with progress billing, retainage, and change orders needs a more detailed costing setup, and maintaining it correctly takes more time each month.

• Bank and card accounts: each one requires its own monthly reconciliation.
• Payroll: W-2 payroll job-costed to projects adds meaningful close time.
• Subcontractors: 1099 tracking, W-9 collection, and payment totals scale with sub count.
• Job costing depth: simple project billing vs WIP, retainage, and progress billing.
• Catch-up backlog: if books are behind, the cleanup scopes separately from the monthly rate.

What DIY Bookkeeping Actually Costs You

DIY bookkeeping is not free. The real cost is your time. Most contractors who stay current on their own books spend somewhere between four and eight hours a month on the work. That sounds manageable until you account for what that time is actually worth.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median pay for a bookkeeping, accounting, or auditing clerk at $49,210 a year, about $23.66 an hour as of May 2024. That is the market rate for someone doing this work as their full-time job. A contractor doing their own books is replacing work that costs roughly $23 to $25 an hour at the low end. At four to eight hours a month, you are spending $100 to $200 in pure labor replacement cost to keep up, before the value of what else you could do with those hours is considered.

In practice, the comparison is sharper. A contractor billing $85 or $150 an hour for field work or time on estimates is using their highest-value hours on a task that someone else could do for a fraction of the rate. That is the real DIY premium. The hours also compound when books drift: a contractor who is three months behind is not spending four hours, they are spending a full weekend on a scramble that still may not close cleanly.

• Typical DIY time: four to eight hours per month when books are current.
• Time climbs fast when books are behind. Three months deferred can mean two full days of catch-up.
• Bookkeeping clerk market rate: about $23.66/hr (BLS, May 2024), before benefits or payroll tax.
• Every hour doing books is an hour not estimating, managing jobs, or finding the next client.

Catch-Up Is a Separate Number from Monthly

One thing that trips contractors up: they ask what bookkeeping costs when their books are six months behind, and they expect a single answer. There are actually two numbers. The catch-up and the ongoing monthly rate are different projects.

The catch-up is a bounded, one-time engagement. It scopes based on how many months need to be reconciled, how complete the source statements are, and how much the chart of accounts and job costing structure need to be rebuilt. It is usually scoped before work begins so there are no mid-project surprises.

Once the catch-up is done and the books are current, the ongoing monthly rate reflects the complexity of maintaining them correctly from that point forward. The monthly rate is what you budget as a recurring line item. The catch-up is a project cost that sits next to it, not inside it.

At TradeBookkeepingPro, the 6-month prepay option includes the catch-up cleanup at no additional cost: Truck tier catch-up goes back approximately six months, Crew and above up to twelve. If your books are current, you skip the catch-up entirely and start straight into the monthly service. For the full picture of what getting current involves before ongoing service begins, see the guide on catch-up bookkeeping for contractors.

• Catch-up is a one-time project scoped by months behind and source-data completeness.
• Monthly service is the recurring rate after the books are current.
• Prepay 6 months: catch-up is included (Truck about 6 months back; Crew and up about 12 months back).
• If books are current: start straight into monthly service, no catch-up needed.

Done-For-You vs DIY vs a General Bookkeeper

There are three realistic options for a contractor who needs their books kept. Understanding what each one actually delivers is how you decide what the right spend is.

DIY through QuickBooks Online puts you in control and keeps the direct monthly cost low. The real cost is your time and the quality risk. Most contractors using QuickBooks on their own lack a trade-native chart of accounts, skip job costing, and let the reconciliation drift when things get busy. The software is not the problem; it is the monthly discipline.

A local generalist bookkeeper handles basic reconciliation and bank feeds but typically does not understand job costing, retainage, or how subcontractor payments interact with 1099 obligations. The monthly close is done, but the construction-specific layer is missing. You are paying for compliance bookkeeping, not trade-native intelligence.

A trade-native, done-for-you service works inside your own QuickBooks Online file, keeps a construction-specific chart of accounts, maintains job costing every month, and delivers an expert-reviewed close. You keep ownership of your QuickBooks file at all times. The monthly cost is higher than a generalist, and meaningfully higher than DIY, but the numbers you get back are actually usable for pricing decisions, loan applications, and bid planning.

• DIY: lowest direct cost, highest time cost, quality depends entirely on your consistency.
• General bookkeeper: handles reconciliation but typically skips job costing and trade-specific structure.
• Trade-native done-for-you: higher monthly cost, trade-specific chart of accounts, job costing maintained, expert-reviewed close.
• All options: you still own your QuickBooks file when working with TradeBookkeepingPro.

Getting an Accurate Quote for Your Business

The price ladder above gives you a solid starting point, but a real quote requires knowing your actual business. Volume of transactions, crew size, number of active jobs, whether you run payroll, how many subs you pay annually, and whether your books are current or behind all factor into which tier fits.

The fastest way to get a number that applies to your situation is to fill out the get-started form and describe what you are working with. No commitment required. We will come back with the tier that fits and a clear explanation of why.

• Current plans start at $249/mo (Truck) with no setup fee and no contract.
• Month-to-month on all tiers. Cancel anytime.
• Prepay 6 months and catch-up is included if your books are behind.
• Start the conversation on the get-started page and get a straight answer on what fits.

FAQ

Sources

1. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks (median pay)

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